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tted  from  the  Bulletin  of  The  University  of  Kansas,  Humanistic  Studies, 
Vol.  1,  No.  1) 


STUDIES  IN  THE  WORK  OF 
GOLLEY  GIBBER 

BY 

DE  WITT  C.  CROISSANT 

{A    part  of  a    thesis    submitted  to    the  Faculty  of  the    Graduate  School   of 
inceton  University,  in  partial  fulfilment  of  the  requirements  for  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Philosophy) 


LAWRENCE,  OCTOBER.  1912 


« 


mm 


{Reprinted  from  the  Bulletin  of  The  University  of  Kansas,  Humanistic  Studies, 
Vol.  1,  No.  1) 


STUDIES  IN  THE  WORK  OF 
GOLLEY  GIBBER 


DE  WITT  C.  CROISSANT, 

{A  part  of  a  thesis  submitted  to  the  Faculty  of  the  Graduate  School  of 
Princeton  University,  in  partial  fulfilment  of  the  requirements  for  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Philosophy) 


LAWRENCE.  OCTOBER,  1912 


CONTENTS 


I 
Notes  on  Gibber's  Plays 

II 

Gibber  and  the  Development  of  Sentimental  Gomedy 

Bibliography 


26G155 


PREFACE 

The  following  studies  are  extracts  from  a  longer  paper  on  the 
life  and  work  of  Gibber.  No  extended  investigation  concerning 
the  life  or  the  literary  activity  of  Gibber  has  recently  appeared, 
and  certain  misconceptions  concerning  his  personal  character,  as 
well  as  his  importance  in  the  development  of  English  literature 
and  the  literary  merit  of  his  plays,  have  been  becoming  more  and 
more  firmly  fixed  in  the  minds  of  students.  Gibber  was  neither 
so  much  of  a  fool  nor  so  great  a  knave  as  is  generally  supposed. 
The  estimate  and  the  judgment  of  two  of  his  contemporaries. 
Pope  and  Dennis,  have  been  far  too  widely  accepted.  The  only 
one  of  the  above  topics  that  this  paper  deals  with,  otherwise 
than  incidentally,  is  his  place  in  the  development  of  a  literary 
mode. 

While  Gibber  was  the  most  prominent  and  influential  of  the 
innovators  among  the  writers  of  comedy  of  his  time,  he  was  not 
the  only  one  who  indicated  the  change  toward  sentimental  comedy 
in  his  work.  This  subject,  too,  needs  fuller  investigation.  I 
hope,  at  some  future  time,  to  continue  my  studies  in  this  field. 

This  work  was  suggested  as  a  subject  for  a  doctor's  thesis,  by 
Professor  John  Matthews  Manly,  while  I  was  a  graduate  student 
at  the  University  of  Ghicago  a  number  of  years  ago,  and  was  con- 
tinued later  under  the  direction  of  Professor  Thomas  Marc  Par- 
rott  at  Princeton.  I  wish  to  thank  both  of  these  scholars,  as  well 
as  Professor  Myra  Reynolds,  who  first  stimulated  my  interest 
in  Restoration  comedy.  The  libraries  of  Harvard,  Yale,  and 
Golumbia  have  been  very  generous  in  supplying  books  which  would 
otherwise  have  been  inaccessible;  but  especial  gratitude  is  due  to 
the  Library  of  Gongress,  and  to  Mr.  Joseph  Plass,  who  called  my 
attention  to  material  in  the  Library  of  Gongress,  which  would 
have  escaped  my  notice  but  for  his  interest.  I  wish  to  express 
my  gratitude  to  Professor  R.  D.  O'Leary,  of  the  University  of 
Kansas,  who  has  read  these  pages  in  manuscript  and  in  proof, 
and  has  offered  many  valuable  suggestions. 

D.  G.  G. 
University    of    Kansas, 
October,  1912. 


STUDIES  IN  THE  WORK  OF  COLLEY  GIBBER 

DeWitt  C.  Croissant 

I 

NOTES  ON  GIBBER'S  PLAYS 

Colley  Gibber's  activity  was  not  confined  to  writing  plays. 
Besides  being  a  leader  in  the  development  of  comedy  and  a  skil- 
ful adapter  in  tragedy,  he  was  the  greatest  actor  of  his  day  in 
comic  roles;  was  the  dominant  personality  in  the  triumvirate 
of  managers  of  the  playhouse,  so  that  the  healthy  theatrical 
conditions  of  his  time  were  largely  due  to  him;  was  a  writer  of 
poetry,  some  of  which  is  fairly  good;  was  the  author  of  some 
of  the  most  amusing  and  clever  controversial  pamphlets  of  the 
time;  and  was  the  author  of  a  most  interesting  autobiography. 
Today  he  is  thought  of  by  many  merely  as  the  hero  of  Pope's 
Dunciad.  In  some  respects  he  deserved  Pope's  satire,  but  the 
things  he  did  well  entitle  him  to  more  consideration  than  he  has 
received. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  these  Notes  to  discuss  merely  his  plays; 
and  to  treat  these  principally  from  the  point  of  view  of  what  may 
be  called  external  relations,  with  some  discussion  of  dramatic 
technique.  Under  the  heading  of  external  relations  I  have  con- 
sidered the  dates  of  the  various  plays,  the  circumstances  of  their 
presentation,  their  sources,  and  their  relation  to  the  various 
types  of  the  drama  of  the  time.  I  have  discussed  the  plays  in 
chronological  order  within  the  various  classes. 


2  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

1.    Faeces. 

Of  the  farces  ascribed  to  Gibber,  only  two,  The  Rival  Quean* 
and  Bulls  and  Bears,  are  unquestionably  his,  and  these  two  are 
not  accessible.  The  Rival  Queans,  acted  at  the  Haymarket, 
June  29,  1710,  printed  in  Dublin  in  1729,  is  without  doubt  by 
Gibber.  But  in  the  collected  edition  of  his  plays,  published  in 
1777,  the  editors  substituted  a  farce  of  the  same  name,  which, 
however,  deals  with  a  different  subject  and  is  by  another  writer. 
Gibber's  farce  was  a  burlesque  of  Lee's  Rival  Queens;  the  piece 
that  was  substituted  deals  with  the  operatic  situation  in  England. 

An  adaptation  of  Doggett's  Country  Wake  (1696),  called  Hob, 
or  The  Country  Wake  (1715),  has  been  ascribed  to  Gibber,  but 
Genest^  doubts  his  authorship  because  it  was  brought  out  while 
Doggett  was  still  on  the  stage. 

Bulls  and  Bears,  Gibber's  second  undisputed  farce,  was  acted 
at  Drury  Lane,  December  2,  1715,  but  was  apparently  not  printed. 

Chuck  (1736)  seems  to  have  been  ascribed  to  him  by  either  the 
author  or  the  publisher  without  grounds,  for  in  a  list  of  plays 
"wrote  by  anonymous  authors  in  the  17th  century,"  appended 
to  the  fourth  edition  of  the  Apology  (1756),  there  is  a  note  on 
this  play  to  the  effect  that  "the  author  or  printer  has  set  the  name. 
of  Mr.  Gibber  to  this  piece."  This  is  not  proof  positive  tha\. 
Gibber  did  not  write  the  play,  for  Cinna's  Conspiracy,  whica 
is  unquestionably  by  him,  appears  in  the  same  list.  In  The  Ne  o 
Theatrical  Dictionary  (1742),  it  is  stated  that  "this  piece  [Chuci^] 
is  extremely  puerile,  yet  the  author  has  thought  proper  to  put 
Mr.  Gibber's  name  to  it."  This  again  is  not  necessarily  con- 
vincing argument  against  Gibber's  authorship,  for  he  was  capable 
of  poor  work,  as  his  poems  and  some  of  his  plays  show. 

On  the  whole,  it  seems  probable  that  Hob  and  Chuck  are  not 
by  Gibber.  In  any  case,  they  are  entirely  without  value,  and  it  is 
therefore  a  matter  of  no  importance  to  literary  history  whether 
their  authorship  is  ever  determined  or  not. 

Goffey's  The  Devil  to  Pay  (1736)  is  stated  in  the  catalogue  of 
the  British  Museum  to  have  been  "revised  by  Golley  Gibber." 
But  the  work  of  revision  was  done  by  Theophilus  Gibber,  his  son, 
and  Gibber  himself  contributed  only  one  song.^ 


1.  II,  573. 

2.  Whlncop,  Complete  List  of  All  the  English  Dramatic  Poets,  p.  199.  See  also  the 
dramatic  list  appended  to  the  second  volume  of  the  fourth  edition  of  the  Apology, 


Croissant:  Colley  Gibber 


2.  Operas. 


In  common  with  many  of  his  contemporaries,  Gibber  attempted 
operatic  pieces.  His  undisputed  operas  are  Venus  and  Adonis 
(1715),  Myrtillo  (1716),  Love  in  a  Riddle  (1729),  and  Damon  and 
Phillida  (1729),  the  last  being  merely  the  sub-plot  of  Love  in  a 
Riddle  acted  separately. ^  Two  other  operatic  pieces,  The  Temple 
of  Dullness  (1745)  and  Capochio  and  Dorinna,  have  been 
ascribed  to  him. 

Love  in  a  Riddle  (1729)  seems  to  have  been  the  cause  of  some 
unpleasantness.  In  the  Life  of  Quin  (1766)  the  following  account 
of  it  is  given:'* 

"This  uncommon  reception  of  The  Beggar  s  Opera  induced 
Colley  Gibber  to  attempt  something  the  same  kind  the  next  year, 
under  the  title  of  Love  in  a  Riddle,  but  how  different  was  its  re- 
ception from  Gay's  production;  it  was  damned  to  the  lowest 
regions  of  infamy  the  very  first  night,  which  so  mortified  Gibber, 
that  it  threw  him  into  a  fever;  and  from  this  moment  he  re- 
solved as  soon  as  he  conveniently  could  to  leave  the  stage,  and 
no  longer  submit  himself  and  his  talents  to  the  capricious  taste 
of  the  town. 

"It  was  generally  thought  that  his  jealousy  of  Gay,  and  the 
high  opinion  he  entertained  of  his  own  piece  had  operated  so  strong- 
ly as  to  make  him  set  every  engine  in  motion  to  get  the  sequel  of 
The  Beggar's  Opera,  called  Polly,  suppressed  in  order  to  engross 
the  town  entirely  to  Love  in  a  Riddle.  Whether  Gibber  did  or 
did  not  bestir  himself  in  this  affair,  it  is  certain  that  Gay  and 
Rich  had  the  mortification  to  see  all  their  hopes  of  a  succeeding 
harvest  blasted  by  the  Lord  Ghamberlain's  absolute  prohibition 
of  it,  after  it  had  been  rehearsed  and  was  just  ready  to  bring 
out." 

In  this  same  volume^  it  is  stated  that  the  failure  of  the  piece 
was  one  of  the  potent  causes  of  the  dissolution  of  the  Drury  Lane 
company,  though  this  seems  an  exaggeration,  as  does  also  the 
effect  on  Gibber  that  is  ascribed  to  the  failure. 

Gibber  denies®  that  he  had  anything  to  do  with  the  suppression 
of  the  second  part  of  The  Beggar's  Opera,  and  gives  as  his  reason 
for  writing  that  he  thought  something  written  in  the  same  form, 
but  recommending  virtue  and  innocence  instead  of  vice  and  wicked- 
ness, "might  not  have  a  less  pretence  to  favor." 


3.  The  sub-plot  of  Woman's  Wit  was  likewise  acted  separately  after  the  original 
play  had  failed  on  the  stage. 

4.  Reprint  of  1887.  p.  28. 

5.  Page  28. 

6.  Apology,    I,    180. 


Ji.  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

The  Temple  of  Dullness  (1745),  which  The  Biographia  Drama- 
tical states  had  been  ascribed  to  Gibber,  is  in  two  acts  of  two 
scenes  each,  the  second  scene  of  each  act  being  the  comic  "inter- 
lude" of  Theobald's  Happy  Captive  (1741).  These  two  scenes 
have  as  their  principal  characters,  Signor  Capochio  and  Signora 
Dorinna.^  The  other  two  scenes,  which  give  the  principal  title  to 
the  piece,  are  based,  as  is  stated  in  the  preface,  on  the  fact  that 
Pope  in  The  Dunciad  makes  the  Goddess  of  Dullness  preside  over 
Italian  operas.  It  is  inconceivable  that  either  Gibber  or  Theobald 
would  have  based  anything  of  the  sort  on  a  hint  from  The  Dunciad 
and  complacently  given  the  credit  to  Pope,  after  the  way  they  had 
both  been  handled  in  The  Dunciad.  There  is  nothing  on  the  title 
page  to  indicate  that  Gibber  had  anything  to  do  with  the  piece. 
The  ascription  of  the  authorship  of  The  Temple  of  Dullness  to 
Gibber  seems  to  be  without  foundation,  and  the  probability  is 
that  this  piece  was  composed  by  a  third  person  soon  after  Theo- 
bald's death,  which  occurred  about  four  months  before  it  was 
acted.^ 

Concerning  Capochio  and  Dorinna,  The  Biographia  Dramatica 
has  the  following  note:  "A  piece  with  this  title,  but  without  a 
date,  is,  in  Mr.  Barker's  catalogue,  ascribed  to  Golley  Gibber.  It 
was  probably  an  abridgment  from  The  Temple  of  Dullness.'"  This 
statement  concerning  the  source  of  Capochio  and  Dorinna 
would  seem  plausible  from  the  supplementary  title  of  The  Temple 
of  Dullness, —  With  the  Humours  of  Signor  Capochio  and  Signora 
Dorinna.  Capochio  and  Dorinna  is  no  doubt  the  two  scenes 
from  Theobald's  The  Happy  Captive  which  had  been  used  in  The 
Temple  of  Dullness,  as  is  stated  above. 

Gibber's  operatic  writings  belong  chiefly  to  the  English  type  of 
pastoral  drama,  rather  than  to  the  type  of  ItaUan  opera.  In 
fact,  they  are  not  operas  either  in  the  Italian  or  in  the  modern 
sense,  but  are  rather  plays  interspersed  with  songs  appropriate 
to  the  characters  who  sing  them.  They  show  the  common  charac- 
teristics of  the  pastoral  drama  of  the  time.^^  They  possess  the 


7.  III.  325. 

8.  The  Advertisement  prefixed  to  The  Happy  Captive  says:  "The  interlude, 
which  is  added  in  two  comic  scenes,  is  entirely  new  to  our  '^liniate;  and  the  success 
of  it  is  submitted  to  experiment,  and  the  taste  of  the  audienct.  Only  this  por- 
tion of  The  Happy  Captive  was  ever  acted. 

9.  Theobald  died  September  18,  1744.  The  Temple  of  Dullness  was  acted 
January   17,   1745. 

10.  For  a  history  of  the  pastoral  drama  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  a  summary 
of  its  qualities,  see  Jeannette  Marks,  The  English  Pastoral  Drama,  London,  1908. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  5 

court  element,  have  the  same  plot  devices,  and  their  characters 
belong  to  the  same  general  types.  It  is  noticeable  that  Cibber 
here,  as  well  as  in  his  comedies,  arrays  himself  with  the  moralists, 
as  is  seen  in  his  introduction  of  a  moral  purpose  in  Love  in  a  Riddle. 
These  pieces  are  in  verse  of  varying  meters.  In  Venus  and  Adonis 
and  Myriillo  there  is  apparent  imitation  of  the  versification  of 
Dry  den's  Alexander  s  Feast;  in  Love  in  a  Riddle  and  Damon  and 
Phillida  the  dialogue  is  in  blank  verse,  but  in  neither  case  is  the 
verse  inspired. 

His  operas  are  neither  intrinsically  nor  historically  important; 
they  are  merely  representative  of  a  vogue  which  was  popular  but 
which  left  no  permanent  impress  on  the  English  drama. 

3.     Tragedies. 

Gibber's  seven  tragedies  appeared  in  the  following  order: 
Xerxes,  1699;  his  adaptation  of  Shakspere's  Richard  III,  1700; 
Perolla  and  Izadora,  1705;  the  three  translations  of  Corneille, 
Ximena,  acted  1712,  but  not  published  until  1719,  Cinna's  Con- 
spiracy, 17  IS,  and  Caesar  in  Egypt,  1725;  and  finally  Papal 
Tyranny,  an  adaptation  of  Shakspere's  King  John,  1745.  The 
best  stage  play  is  Richard  III,  but  those  that  make  the  most 
agreeable  reading  are  the  alterations  of  Corneille. 

Xerxes  (1699),  which  was  a  failure,  belongs  to  the  type  of  the 
tragedies  of  the  last  decade  of  the  century,  in  which  the  material 
of  the  heroic  play  is  handled  in  blank  verse,  in  which  there  is  no 
comedy,  and  in  which  there  is  in  general  a  following  of  French 
models.^ ^  In  its  presentation  of  a  story  of  distressed  womanhood, 
it  allies  itself  with  the  sentimental  tragedy  of  the  school  of  South- 
erne  and  Otway.  In  its  use  of  the  supernatural,  in  its  puerile  use 
of  claptrap,  and  in  the  bombast  and  extravagance  of  emotion,  it 
follows  the  general  usage  of  the  tragedies  of  the  time. 

When  it  was  written  Cibber  was  one  of  the  company  at  Drury 
Lane,  but  the  play  was  refused  there,  and  was  accepted  at 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  only  when  Cibber  guaranteed  the  expenses 
of  the  production.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  two  such  great 
actors  as  Betterton  and  Mrs.  Barry  were  in  the  cast,  the  play 
was  a  failure.  ^^ 

The  common  supposition  that  it  was  acted  only  once,  is  based 


11.  Thorndike,  Tragedy,  p.  273. 

12.  Davies,  Dramatic  Miscellanies,  III,  459. 


6  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

on  Addison's  inventory  of  Rich's  theatrical  paraphernaHa,  in 
which  are  mentioned  "the  imperial  robes  of  Xerxes,  never  worn 
but  once."^*^  The  play  had  been  acted  ten  years  previously, 
and  Addison  is  speaking  of  an  entirely  different  playhouse  and 
manager  so  that  this  testimony,  if  it  does  apply  to  this  play,  is  prob- 
ably not  to  be  given  much  weight.  While  the  play  may  have  been 
withdrawn  from  the  stage  after  only  one  performance,  Addison's 
evidence  does  not  establish  the  matter  one  way  or  the  other. 

Gibber's  next  venture  in  tragedy  was  more  successful,  for  while 
his  adaptation  of  Shakspere's  Richard  III  has  not  received  critical 
commendation,  it  was  for  over  a  century  practically  the  only 
version  presented  on  the  stage  and  is  still  used  by  many  actors. 

When  Gibber's  Richard  III  was  originally  acted  at  Drury  Lane 
in  1700,  Gharles  Killigrew,  Master  of  the  Revels,  forbade  the  first 
act,  because  the  distress  of  Henry,  introduced  from  Shakspere's 
Henry  VI,  might  bring  the  exiled  King  James  to  the  mind  of  the 
people;  so  that  only  four  acts  could  be  given.  The  play  was  a 
comparative  failure  at  first,  owing  no  doubt  to  the  omission  of  so 
important  and  necessary  a  part  of  the  revision,  so  that  Gibber's 
profits  from  the  third  night,  as  author,  came  to  less  than  five 
pounds.^  Later,  when  this  act  was  restored,  the  piece  became 
a  success.  As  has  been  pointed  out  by  Dohse^^  and  Wood^^, 
Gibber  may  in  making  this  adaptation  have  used  the  chronicles 
of  Hall  and  others,  and  probably  was  influenced  by  The  Mirror  for 
Magistrates  and  Garyl's  English  Princess  (1667). 

In  his  alteration  Gibber  has  cut  down  the  play  to  a  little  more 
than  half  its  original  length,  and  of  this  remainder  only  a  little 
over  a  third  is  found  in  Shakspere's  Richard  III,  while  the  rest  is 
from  a  number  of  Shakspere's  plays  or  is  made  up  of  original  addi- 
tions by  Gibber.  ^"^  The  alterations  vary  from  the  change  of 
single  words,  ^^  to  the  addition  of  scenes  entirely  by  Gibber.  The 
omissions,  such  as  Anne's  spitting  at  Gloster,  I,  ii,  146,  are  gener- 


is.    The  Taller,  Number  42,  July   16,   1709. 

14.  Address  to  the  Reader,  prefixed  to  Ximena. 

15.  Richard  Dohse,  Colley  Gibber's  Buehnenarbeitung  von  Shakspere's  Richard 
III,    Bonn,    1899. 

16.  AUce  I.  Perry  Wood,  The  Stage  History  of  Richard  III,  New  York,  1909. 

17.  The  number  and  sources  of  the  hues  as  given  by  Furness,  Variorum  Richard 
III,  p.  604,  are  as  foUows:  Richard  II,  14;  I  Henry  IV,  6;  2  Henry  IV,  20:  Henry  V, 
24;  1  Henry  VI,  5:  2  Henry  VI,  17;  3  Henry  VI,  103;  Richard  III,  795;  Clbber, 
1069;  total.  2053.  The  niunber  of  Unes  in  the  Globe  text  of  Shakspere's  Richard 
III    is    3621. 

18.  As  "God"  to  "Heaven,"  I,  ii,  236;  due  in  this  instance  to  the  Collier 
Influence. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  7 

ally  happy;  the  lines  he  has  substituted  are  generally  easier  to 
understand,  if  less  aesthetically  pleasing,  than  those  of  the  original; 
and  the  additions  throughout  are  such  as  add  clearness  and  theat- 
ric effectiveness. 

Richard  is  made  the  central  figure,  so  that  the  play  revolves  more 
closely  about  him  than  in  Shakspere.  A  love  story,  more  slightly 
developed  than  usual  in  the  adaptations  of  this  period,  is  intro- 
duced at  the  end  of  the  play  in  accordance  with  contemporary 
usage.  The  women  are  made  less  prominent,  the  lyric  chorus 
effect  of  the  various  scenes  in  which  these  women  foretell  and 
bewail  is  omitted,  and  the  whole  action  is  made  more  simple  and 
direct.  Shakspere's  Richard  III  is  full  of  this  lyric  element 
which  Cibber  has  excised. 

With  this  curtailment  of  plot  comes  likewise  a  less  highly  pre- 
sented delineation  of  character.  Not  only  is  the  number  of 
characters  diminished,  but  modifications  are  made  in  those  that 
remain.  Richard  becomes  less  the  unfeeling  hypocrite,  by  use  of 
asides  his  motives  and  character  are  made  more  clear,  and  he  is 
influenced  more  by  love;  his  victims  are  not  so  vividly  presented, 
and  though  their  weakness  of  will  and  character  is  not  less  than  in 
the  original,  the  reader  does  not  feel  it  so  much.  Gibber's  Richard 
III,  like  his  King  John,  is  more  play  than  poem;  in  it  Cibber  has 
attempted  to  make  everything  subservient  to  dramatic  effective- 
ness. 

Perolla  and  Izadora  was  acted  at  Drury  Lane  on  December  8, 
1705,  and  published  the  next  year.  Lintot  had  bought  the  copy- 
right November  14,  1705,  a  few  weeks  before  its  presentation,  for 
thirty-six  pounds,  eleven  shillings,  next  to  the  largest  amount 
that  he  paid  Cibber  for  any  of  his  plays.  Cibber  explains  that  he 
omitted  Woman's  Wit  from  the  1721  edition  of  his  plays  because 
it  was  so  inferior  a  drama,  which  was  no  doubt  his  reason  for  omit- 
ting Xerxes;  but  why  he  should  not  have  included  Perolla  and 
Izadora,  which  brought  him  a  good  third  and  sixth  day  at  the 
theatre,  though  it  does  not  appear  to  have  been  presented  after- 
wards, is  not  clear,  unless,  as  is  probable,  he  included  in  this  edi- 
tion only  such  plays  as  had  gained  a  more  or  less  permanent  place 
on  the  stage. 

Cibber  shows  unusual  modesty  in  his  dedication  of  this  play, 
which  he  founded  on  a  part  of  the  story  of  Perolla  and  Izadora 


8  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

from  The  Romance  of  Parthenissa^^  (1654)  by  Roger  Boyle,  Earl 
of  Orrery.  He  "saw  so  many  incidents  in  the  fable,  such  natural 
and  noble  sentiments  in  the  characters,  and  so  just  a  distress  in 
the  passions,  that  he  had  little  more  than  the  trouble  of  blank 
verse  to  make  it  fit  for  the  theatre."^"  Gibber  has  followed  the 
events  in  Parthenissa  very  closely,  making  few  changes  or  addi- 
tions. However,  he  has  PeroUa  and  Izadora  in  love  before  the 
action  begins,  whereas  they  do  not  meet  in  the  romance  until 
after  Perolla  has  saved  the  life  of  Blacius  in  what  makes  the  end 
of  Gibber's  second  act;  and  at  the  close  of  the  play  he  unites  the 
lovers,  while  the  story  goes  on  indefinitely  in  Parthenissa.  The 
characters  display  about  the  same  qualities;  Blacius  is  made 
perhaps  a  trifle  more  reasonable  and  Poluvius  a  little  less  so.  The 
play  is  much  better  as  a  play  than  the  original  is  as  a  story. 

The  play  in  general  conforms  to  the  French  classical  type; 
the  unities  are  observed,  the  characters  are  few  and  noble,  it  is 
written  in  blank  verse,  and  there  are  no  humorous  touches. 
Only  in  the  two  deaths  and  the  one  fight  on  the  stage  does  the 
play  violate  the  French  tradition.  In  the  death  of  the  wicked, 
the  reward  of  the  virtuous,  and  the  general  nature  of  the  action, 
it  groups  itself  with  the  heroic  plays  of  the  preceding  century, 
but  of  course  it  does  not  conform  to  that  type  in  versification. 
Gibber  was  here  probably  writing  under  the  influence  of  Gorneille, 

Ximena,  or  The  Heroic  Daughter,  an  alteration  of  Gorneille's  Cid^ 
was  acted  at  Drury  Lane,  November  28,  1712,  when  it  had  a  run 
of  about  eight  performances;^^  but  it  was  not  printed  until  1719, 
when  it  appeared  in  octavo  after  it  had  been  revived  at  Drury 
Lane,  November  1,  1718.  Gibber  explains  that  he  thus  delayed 
publishing  the  play  because  "most  of  his  plays  had  a  better  recep- 
tion from  the  public  when  his  interest  was  no  longer  concerned  in 
them."^^  The  dedication  of  Ximena  brought  a  storm  of  criticism 
on  Gibber^^  because  in  it  he  spoke  of  Addison  as  a  wren  being 
carried  by  Steele  as  an  eagle,  which  figure  he  later  apphed,  in  his 
odes,  to  himself  and  the  king.  He  had  the  judgment  to  omit  this 
dedication  from  the  collected  edition  of  his  plays. 

As  in  the  case  of  Richard  III,  he  added  a  first  act  to  the  Cid  in 


19.  Edition  of  1665.  pp.  102-157. 

20.  Dedication   of  Perolla   and   Izadora. 

21.  Genest.  11,  506. 

22.  To  the  Reader,  Ximena. 

23.  See  Canfleld,  Corneille  and  Racine  in  England,  p.  169. 


Croissant:  Colley  Gibber  9 

order  that  the  audience  might  understand  the  situation  of  the 
various  characters  at  the  outset;  a  most  important  and  necessary 
thing  if  the  audience  is  not  familiar  with  the  story  and  the  situa- 
tion beforehand.  In  his  alterations  of  Shakspere  he  followed  the 
English  method  and  presented  this  information  to  his  audience 
by  action  ;in  his  alteration  of  Corneille  he  followed  the  French 
method  by  having  his  characters  tell  each  other  about  it  for  the 
benefit  of  the  audience. 

Cibber  has  discussed  at  length  the  changes  he  has  made  in  the 
Cid,  and  his  reasons  for  them,  in  the  prefatory  "examen."  The 
main  reason  seems  to  have  been  his  desire  to  make  the  play  less 
"romantic"  and  the  action  more  probable  and  reasonable  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  eighteenth  century  Englishman,  whose  ideals 
of  honor  and  whose  general  characteristics  were  very  difiFerent 
from  those  of  the  seventeenth  century  Frenchman.  Indeed, 
Cibber  explains  in  relation  to  one  of  these  changes:  "Here  they 
seem  too  declamatory  and  romantic,  which  I  have  endeavored  to 
avoid,  by  giving  a  more  spirited  tone  to  the  passions,  and  reducing 
them  nearer  to  common  life." 

Ximena,  because  of  its  source,  would  naturally  have  the  general 
characteristics  of  French  tragedy,  in  which  almost  everything 
happens  off  the  stage,  and  in  which  the  characters  appear  before  the 
audience  only  to  tell  it  what  they  think  or  what  has  been  done. 
It  violates  the  French  canons  by  having  a  sub-action,  though  this 
sub-action  is  not  sufficiently  important  to  distract  the  attention 
materially  from  the  main  action,  and  is  bound  very  closely  to  it. 
The  blow  which  Don  Gormaz  gives  Alvarez  constitutes  the  nearest 
approach  to  violent  action;  but  this  blow,  however,  appears  in 
the  original  play. 

Besides  the  anonymity  of  Cinna's  Conspiracy,  the  closeness 
with  which  it  follows  Corneille's  Cinna  and  the  difference  in  its 
tone  from  the  rest  of  Gibber's  work  have  led  to  doubt  as  to  his 
authorship.^*  To  see  that  Cibber  was  not  always  sprightly  and 
inconsequential,  however,  as  he  is  usually  supposed  to  be,  one 
has  but  to  read  his  Cicero  and  his  poems.  The  play  was  presented 
less  than  three  months  after  Ximena,  and  to  bring  out  another 
French  tragedy  translated  by  the  same  hand  in  so  short  a  time 
might  have  subjected  Cibber  to  the  charge  of  hasty  work.    Though 


24.     Genest,  II,  511;  and  Canfleld,  op.  cit.,  pp.  179  ff. 


10  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

Ximena  apparently  had  a  run  of  eight  nights,  it  did  not  receive 
critical  approbation,  and  Cinna's  Conspiracy,  if  known  to  be  by 
Gibber,  was  likely  to  bring  further  critical  disapproval,  so  that 
Gibber  may  have  thought  it  would  have  better  chance  of  success 
if  his  authorship  were  not  known.  Gibber  was  ambitious  to  be 
thought  wise  and  serious,  as  his  prefaces  and  Cicero  show,  and  the 
lack  of  success  of  the  play  together  with  its  nearness  to  Ximena 
in  time  of  presentation  would  sufficiently  explain  his  failure  to 
claim  the  authorship. 

But  there  is  external  proof  which  would  seem  to  be  convincing 
in  support  of  his  authorship.  Defoe,  according  to  the  Biographia 
Dramatica,^^  in  a  pamphlet  written  about  1713  ascribed  the 
play  to  Gibber;  and  Nichols,  in  Literary  Anecdotes  of  the  Eigh- 
teenth Century,^^  gives  an  extract  from  a  memorandum  book  of 
Lintot,  entitled  Copies  when  purchased,  according  to  which  Gibber, 
on  March  16,  1712  (O.  S.),  was  paid  thirteen  pounds  for  Cinna's 
Conspiracy.  The  play  was  first  acted  at  Drury  Lane,  February 
19,  1713,  about  a  month  before  the  purchase  by  Lintot.  The 
fact  that  Gibber  was  paid  for  the  play  so  short  a  time  after  its 
presentation  would  seem  to  be  sufficient  proof  that  it  is  by  Gibber, 
even  though  he  apparently  made  no  public  claim  to  its  author- 
ship. 

In  the  alteration  of  Gorneille's  Cinna,  Gibber  has  made  remark- 
ably few  changes.  There  is  only  one  of  any  moment,  the  account 
of  the  meeting  of  the  conspirators  in  the  second  scene  of  the  first 
act.  Gorneille  has  had  Ginna  give  an  account  of  this  meeting  to 
Emilie,  while  Gibber  presents  the  meeting  itself.  This  involves  the 
omission  of  some  narration  and  the  creation  of  some  new  charac- 
ters who  have  a  few  short  speeches.  Gibber  throughout  his 
adaptation  seeks  to  gain  vividness  and  clearness,  and  his  handling 
of  this  incident  is  probably  the  best  example  of  his  method  in 


25. 

II,    104. 

26. 

VIII. 

204 

"Mr.   Gibber. 

1701 

Nov. 

8 

A  Third  of  Love's  Last  Shift 

1705 

Nov. 

14 

Perolla  and  Izadora 

1707 

Oct. 

27 

Double  Gallant 

Nov. 

22 

Lady's  Last  Stake 

Feb. 

26 

Venus  and  Adonis 

1708 

Oct. 

9 

Comical  Lover 

1712 

Mar. 

16 

Cinna's  Conspiracy 

1718 

Oct. 

1 

The  Nonjuror 

No  price  or  date. 

Mrytillo,  A  pastoral. 

Rival  Fools, 

Heroic  Daughter, 

Wit  at  Several  Weapons." 

3 

4 

6 

36 

U 

0 

16 

2 

6 

32 

5 

0 

6 

7 

6 

10 

15 

0 

13 

0 

0 

05 

0 

0 

Croissant:  Colley  Cihber  11 

this  respect.  The  other  changes  consist  merely  in  the  omission 
and  shortening  of  speeches.  On  the  whole  Cinna's  Conspiracy 
is  almost  a  literal  translation,  though  a  little  free  here  and  there. 

The  testimony  of  the  critics  concerning  the  source  of  Caesar  in 
Egypt,  acted  at  Drury  Lane,^'^  December  9,  1724,  published  in 
1725,  is  somewhat  confusing.  The  Biographia  Dramatica  finds 
its  source  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  The  False  One;  Genest^^ 
says:  "The  plan  of  this  tragedy  is  chiefly  borrowed  from 
The  False  One — that  part  of  it  which  concerns  Cornelia  is  said 
to  be  taken  from  Corneille's  Povipce."  Stoye,^^  while  apparently 
oblivious  of  Corneille's  play,  mentions  Lucan's  Pharsalia  in  addi- 
tion to  The  False  One;  and  Miss  Canfield  says:"^^  "Taking  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  False  One,  Corneille's  Pompee,  and  one  or 
two  ideas  of  his  own,  he  stirred  them  all  together  with  such 
vigor,  and  so  disguised  them  with  his  wonderful  versification, 
that  it  is  an  almost  impossible  task  to  distinguish  the  different 
elements  in  the  dish.  .  .  .  The  general  plan  and  construc- 
tion of  the  play  are  undoubtedly  Corneille's,  many  of  the  best 
speeches  are  literally  translated,  especially  some  of  the  famous 
ones  between  Cornelia  and  Caesar:  and  the  description  of  Pompey's 
death  is  taken  verbatim  from  the  French."  This  last  statement 
of  Miss  Canfield's  comes  nearest  to  the  truth,  but  it  leaves  out 
of  account  the  slight  indebtedness  to  Lucan.''^ 

An  examination  of  these  three  plays  shows,  in  fact,  how  little 
Cibber  used  The  False  One  in  the  construction  of  Caesar  in  Egypt. 
Re  was  no  doubt  familiar  with  the  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  play 
and  used  some  things  from  it,  though  very  little  in  comparison 
with  what  he  has  used  from  Pompee.  lie  used  it  for  hints  in 
some  particulars^^  just  as  he  did  the  Pharsalia,  from  which  he 
apparently  took  the  idea  of  having  one  scene  occur  before  the 
tomb  of  Alexander,  and  from  which  he  obtained  the  burning  of 
Pharos. 

One  incident,  the  display  of  Pompey's  head,  v/ell  illustrates 
the  change  that  had  come  since  the  days  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 


27.  Although  acted  six  times  it  could  not  be  considered  extremely  successful. 
According  to  Genest,  III,  102,  Nichols  speaks  of  having  made  merry  with  a  party 
of  friends  over  the  pasteboard  swans,  on  the  first  night  of  its  production. 

28.  Ill,  161. 

29.  Das  Verhaeltniss  von  Gibber's  Tragocdie  Caesar  in  Egypt  zu  Fletcher's  The 
False  One. 

30.  Op.   cit..   p.   223. 

31.  Cibber  no  doubt  used  Rowe's  translation   (1710). 

32.  Compare,  for  instance,  the  general  idea  of  the  exposition  in  Act  I. 


12  University  of  Kansas  Hmnanistic  Studies 

In  The  False  One,  the  head  was  actually  brought  on  the  stage; 
but  in  neither  Cibber  nor  Corneille  was  the  head  actually  displayed. 
The  actual  appearance  of  the  head  would  probably  have  been 
almost  as  distasteful  to  (fibber's  audience  as  to  Corneille's. 

His  method  of  adaptation  here  is  more  like  that  in  his  alteration 
of  Shakspere  than  his  method  in  Xiniena  or  Cinna's  Conspiracy. 
He  has  crowded  the  incidents,  has  expanded  the  action  and  in- 
creased its  liveliness,  has  enhanced  the  value  of  the  piece  as  a 
stage  play,  without,  however,  improving  its  literary  quality. 
He  has  a  good  deal  happen  in  one  day,  but  manages  to  satisfy 
the  technical  demands  of  the  unity  of  time. 

He  increases  the  probability  by  the  alteration  of  certain  pas- 
sages. For  instance,  whereas  both  the  Pharsalia,  as  completed 
by  Rowe,^^  and  The  False  One,  from  one  of  which  he  took  the 
incident,  have  Caesar  swimming  from  the  island  of  Pharos  with 
drawn  sword  in  one  hand  and  documents  in  the  other,  Cibber 
has  him  swim  with  only  the  documents. 

While  this  play  is  essentially  an  adaptation  of  Corneille,  the 
general  atmosphere  and  effect  are  not  those  of  French  tragedy, 
but  are  rather  those  of  the  minor  Elizabethan  tragicomedy. 
Its  beginning  and  end  have  a  historical  rather  than  a  dramatic 
interest,  so  that  the  play  produces  the  effect  of  a  love  story 
with  an  impersonal  enveloping  action,  which  is  again  more  Eng- 
lish than  French. 

Papal  Tyranny  was  acted  at  Covent  Garden,  February  15, 
1745,  when  it  had  a  run  of  ten  nights,  and  was  published  in  the 
same  year.  Shakspere's  King  John,  which  had  been  played  in 
1737  and  1738,  after  Cibber's  alteration  had  been  talked  of  and 
withdrawn,  was  again  revived  on  February  20,  1745,  ^"^  with 
Garrick  as  King  John  and  Mrs.  Theophilus  Cibber,  then  at  the 
height  of  her  popularity,  as  Constance.  This  was  no  doubt  done 
both  to  profit  by  the  publicity  Cibber's  work  had  brought 
about,  and  to  take  as  much  credit  as  possible  from  Cibber,  by 
showing  the  lack  of  originality  in  his  work.'^^  According  to 
Victor,^     Cibber's    profits   from    Papal    Tyranny   amounted    to 


.33.     Lucan    ends    before    this    incident,     but   Rowe   continues   tlie   narrative 
using  the  same  materia!  as  The  False  One. 

34.  Genest,  IV,  146,  says  that  it  had  not   been  acted  since    1695,  though   he 
records  the  performances  in   1737  and  1738. 

35.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  eiTorts  were  made  to  deprive  Cibber  of  credit  for  his 
work  not  only  in  this  play  but    also  in  The  Non-Juror  and  The  Refusal. 

36.  The  History  of  the  Theatres  of  London  and  Dublin,  II,  49. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  13 

four  hundred  pounds,  which  probably  includes  what  he  received 
frora  acting  Pan  lulph  as  well  as  his  author's  profits. 

The  play  had  been  written  some  years  before  it  was  finally 
acted,  the  parts  had  been  distributed,  and  everything  was  prac- 
tically ready  for  the  presentation  in  public  during  the  season 
1736-7.  But  so  much  criticism  was  leveled  at  Cibber  for  daring 
again  to  alter  Shakspere  that  one  day  he  quietly  walked  into  the 
theatre,  removed  the  copy  of  the  play  from  the  prompter's 
desk,  and  went  away  with  it  without  a  word  to  any  one."^'^  It 
was  finally  presented,  as  already  stated,  in  1745,  when  there  was  a 
threatened  invasion  by  the  Young  Pretender,  which  made  the 
political  and  anti-Catholic  elements  of  the  play  timely. 

Cibber  says  in  the  dedication  that  he  had  two  reasons  for 
altering  the  play:  antagonism  to  Catholicism,  and  a  desire  to 
adjust  the  play  to  contemporary  stage  requirements — "to  make 
it  more  like  a  play  than  he  found  it  in  Shakspere."  His  addi- 
tions to  the  anti-Catholic  elements  of  the  play  are  inconsistent 
with  the  rest  of  the  action,  and  the  changes  in  structure  have 
increased  rather  than  diminished  the  epic  quality.  He  has, 
without  being  conscious  that  he  was  doing  so,  gone  back  of  Shak- 
spere's  time  in  introducing  the  anti-popish  element;  a  quality 
of  Shakspere's  source  which  Shakspere  had  omitted,  but  which 
Cibber  reintroduced  to  the  detriment  of  his  play  as  drama. 

The  entire  first  act  of  Shakspere's  play  is  omitted,  besides  which 
there  are  other  shorter  omissions.  The  point  of  view,  too,  is 
very  different;  for  in  Cibber's  play  Pandulph  is  the  central  figure, 
instead  of  King  John,  as  is  indicated  by  the  change  of  title  from 
The  Life  and  Death  of  King  John  to  Papal  Tyranny  in  the  Reign 
of  King  John.  Various  short  scenes  entirely  by  Cibber  are  intro- 
duced, the  most  noticeable  being  one  in  the  last  act  in  which 
Constance  attends  the  funeral  of  Arthur  at  Swinestead,  where 
King  John  has  been  brought  to  die. 

The  characters  are  more  changed  than  the  plot;  all  those  which 
appear  only  in  the  first  act  are  omitted,  besides  such  characters 
as  Peter  of  Pomfret,  Elinor,  Austria,  and  Chatillon.  The  part 
of  the  bastard  Faulconbridge  is  very  much  cut  down  and  softened, 
for  as  Shakspere  conceived  him  he  was  too  "low"  and  comic  for 
a  dignified   tragedy   according  to   the   views  of  the  eighteenth 


37.  Davies,  Dramatic  Miscellanies,  I,  5.  For  a  characteristic  example  of  the 
criticism  to  which  Cibber  was  subjected,  see  Fielding's  Historical  Register  for  the 
Year   1730,   Act   III. 


IJ).  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

century.  The  role  of  Constance  is  much  enlarged  as  well  as  that 
of  Pandulph. 

Gibber's  tragedies  are  imitative;  he  showed  no  creative  ability 
in  this  field.  That  his  Richard  III  has  held  the  stage  until  the 
present  is  an  indication  that  it  is  at  least  a  good  stage  play.  The 
other  tragedies,  except  Xerxes  and  Papal  Tyranny,  do  not  possess 
any  very  positive  virtues  or  defects;  they  are  of  average  merit  as 
compared  with  the  work  done  by  Gibber's  contemporaries. 

They  are  alterations  of  Shakspere  or  Corneille,  except  Xerxes 
and  Perolla  and  Izadora.  In  his  alterations  of  the  French  he  has 
anglicized  some  of  the  ideas,  has  had  a  tendency  to  present 
rather  than  relate  incidents,  and  generally  has  tried  to  make  the 
productions  conform  to  English  ideas.  Turning  them  into  Eng- 
Hsh  has  not  made  them  romantic  or  altered  in  any  essential 
degree  their  neo-classical  quality. 

His  alterations  of  Shakspere  have  not  changed  the  essential 
qualities;  they  are  still  characteristically  English,  and  display 
the  characteristics  of  the  originals.  He  has  not  altered  Shakspere 
because  Shakspere  is  too  "Gothic,"  or  too  romantic  and  extrava- 
gant, for  Gibber  complains  that  King  John  is  too  restrained. 

In  relation  to  these  alterations  of  Shakspere  one  naturally 
thinks  of  the  flood  of  plays  about  this  time  which  had  Shakspere 
as  a  basis.^^  Gibber  does  not,  in  Richard  III  at  least,  follow  the 
example  of  Tate  and  his  kind,  but  adheres  more  closely  than  they 
to  the  originals.  It  is  for  this  reason,  principally,  that  Gibber's 
Richard  III  was  successful.  In  this  he  has  not  attempted  to 
follow  contemporary  practice  in  adhering  to  the  unities,  in  the 
observance  of  poetic  justice,  in  the  making  of  the  hero  viituous, 
or  in  adding  the  element  of  show  and  pageantry.  His  addi- 
tion of  a  scene  of  violence^^  is  for  the  purpose  of  helping  the  spec- 
tator to  understand  the  play.  Even  his  borrowing  of  lines  from 
other  plays  by  Shakspere  has  saved  him  partially  from  the  in- 
congruous or  weak  mixture  of  two  styles  which  mars  the  work 
of  other  adapters.  He  has  told  the  same  story  as  Shakspere, 
and  has  not  done  violence  to  his  original  either  in  character, 
plot,  or,  for  the  most  part,  in  language. 

38.  For  full  discussion  of  the  relationship  between  Cibber's  Richard  III  and 
Shakspere's  Richard  III,  see  A.  I.  P.  Wood,  and  Dohse.  The  whole  subject  of 
Shaksperian  alterations  is  taken  up  in  Lounsbury's  Shakspere  as  a  Dramatic  Artist, 
and  in  Kilbourne's  Alterations  and  Adaptations  of  Shakspere.  It  is  curious  that 
Lounsbury  does  not  discuss  Cibber's  Richard  III,  which  is  not  only  the  most 
famous  Shaksperian  alteration  but  the  only  one  of  any  real  value. 

39.  The  addition  of  parts  from  3  Henry  VI  at  the  beginning  of  the  play. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  15 

His  adaptation  of  King  John  is  handled  differently.  This  play, 
even  more  than  Shakspere's  King  John,  is  unfitted  for  the  modern 
stage;  its  plot  is  not  dramatic,  and  its  persons  are  not  modern  in 
their  qualities.  Such  a  play  must  depend  for  its  appeal  on  its 
poetic  qualities,  and  Cibber  was  personally  incapable  of  altering 
the  play  and  retaining  its  poetic  qualities. 

Although  Cibber  is  not  unaffected  by  the  sentimental  type  of 
tragedy,  as  Xerxes  and  Perolla  and  Izadora  show,  he  does  not 
seem  influenced  by  it  to  any  great  extent.  This  is  remarkable 
in  one  who  was  in  the  very  forefront  of  the  movement  toward 
sentimental  comedy;  though  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  the  two 
tragedies  which  do  show  traces  of  this  sentimental  note  are  the 
only  two  which  are  not  based  on  previous  plays. 

As  Thorndike^^  has  pointed  out,  during  this  period  two  influ- 
ences are  at  work — the  influence  of  the  Elizabethan  romantic 
drama,  and  the  influence  of  the  French  classical  drama;  and  Cibber 
rather  fairly  represents  both  of  these.  Xerxes  shows  some  French 
influence  in  the  construction,  though  it  is  probably  more  Eliza- 
bethan in  the  handling  of  the  material;  but  Perolla  and  Izadora 
and  the  three  plays  from  Corneille  conform  to  French  usage 
almost  entirely  in  material  as  well  as  in  method.  The  restraint 
in  Richard  III — for  notwithstanding  Hazlitt,  this  play  is  not  as 
brutal  as  Shakspere's — is  due  to  the  change  brought  about 
through  the  imitation  of  French  tragedy. 

In  accordance  with  contemporary  usage,  all  these  tragedies 
are  in  blank  verse;  but  the  verse  is  of  no  great  merit.  Cibber's 
verse  for  the  most  part  is  not  musical  nor  subtle,  but  it  has  few 
mannerisms.  He  sometimes  uses  alliteration,  but  not  to  an  ob- 
jectionable or  excessive  degree,  and  although  his  style  has  been 
called  alliterative,  his  use  of  this  device  in  his  verse  is  so  infre- 
quent as  to  make  the  term  a  misnomer. 

Cibber  conforms  to  the  custom  of  the  time  in  respect  to  rime. 
Occasionally  he  introduces  a  couplet  in  the  midst  of  a  scene,  but 
this  is  seldom  and  for  no  apparent  reason.  The  exits,  except 
those  of  minor  importance,  are  marked  by  rime.  This  device, 
de^-^-nded  from  the  Elizabethan  drama,  where  it  was  probably 
used  to  mark  more  strongly  the  ends  of  scenes  because  of  the 
lack  of  a  curtain  which  concealed  the  whole  stage,  is  continued 
during  and  after  the  Restoration  period  without  any  valid  reason 


40.     Tragedy,   VIII    and    IX. 


16  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

and  becomes  for  the  most  part  a  mere  convention,  which  is  not 
confined  to  tragedy  but  ai)pears  in  comedy  and  even  in  farce. 
Gibber  shows  a  tendency  to  increase  the  number  of  couplets 
with  the  increased  importance  of  the  exits,* ^  and  in  Ximena 
and  Caesar  in  Egypt  we  find  several  scenes  closing  with  as  many  as 
three. 

It  has  perhaps  been  made  suflSciently  evident  that  Gibber  was 
not  a  great  writer  of  tragedy.  He  lacked  any  deep  philosophy 
of  life,  tragic  consciousness,  and  deep  poetic  feeling.  He  was  not 
without  power  of  thought,  but  his  thought  concerned  itself  with 
the  obvious  and  the  external,  and  had  an  element  of  friskiness,  so 
that  when  he  turned  to  tragedy  his  work  became  labored  and 
even  commonplace. 

Nor  does  he  show  originality  in  his  themes.  The  story  of 
Xerxes  is  apparently  derived  from  history,'*"  and  aside  from 
Perolla  and  Izadora,  whose  story  is  taken  from  a  romance,  is  the 
only  one  of  his  tragedies  which  is  not  based  on  the  work  of  greater 
men  than  himself.  Although  Richard  III  is  a  better  stage  play 
than  its  source,  the  other  adaptations  are  inferior  to  the  originals 
both  as  acting  versions  and  as  pure  literature. 

4.     Comedies. 

Love's  Last  Shift,  Gibber's  first  play,  was  acted  at  Drury  Lane 
in  January,  1696,  and  was  published  the  same  year,  when  he  was 
a  little  more  than  twenty-four  years  old.  The  comedy  was  ac- 
cepted by  the  managers  through  the  good  offices  of  Southerne, 
for  Gibber's  standing  with  the  patentees  was  such  that  they  were 
not  disposed  to  recognize  ability  in  him. 

So  little  had  been  expected  of  the  piece,  and  so  great  was  its 
success,  that  Gibber  was  immediately  charged  with  plagiarism,*^ 
a  charge  which  he  entirely  denies  in  the  dedication.     He  claims 


41.  See  especially  throughout  Ximena. 

42.  According  to  The  Life  of  Aesopus,  this  "was  said  to  be  a  silly  tale  collected 
from  some  dreaming  romance,"  but  as  the  writer  does  not  give  the  title  of  this 
romance  and  apparently  had  no  knowledge  of  the  play,  his  testimony  is  of  no 
value. 

43.  "The  furious  John  Dennis,  who  hated  Gibber  for  obstructing,  as  he  imagined, 
the  progress  of  his  tragedy,  called  The  Invader  of  His  Country,  in  very  passionate 
terms  denies  his  claim  to  this  comedy:  'When  The  Fool  in  Fashion  was  first  acted,' 
says  the  critic,  'Gibber  was  hardly  twenty-two  years  of  age;  how  could  he,  at  the 
age  of  twenty,  write  a  comedy  with  a  just  design,  distinguished  characters,  and  a 
proper  dialogue  who  now,  at  forty,  treats  us  with  Hibernian  sense  and  Hibernian 
English?'"   Davies,  Dramatic  Miscellanies,  III,  410. 


Croissant:  Colley  Gibber  17 

that  "the  fable  is  entirely  his  own,  nor  is  there  a  line  or  thought 
throughout  the  whole,  for  which  he  is  wittingly  obliged  either  to 
the  dead  or  the  living."  There  are,  however,  some  striking 
similarities  in  the  situations  and  the  characters  in  the  sub -action 
of  Love's  Last  Shift  and  Carlile's  Fortune  Hunters  (1689).  Car- 
lile's  Elder  Wealthy  and  Young  Wealthy  are  closely  paralleled  by 
Elder  Worthy  and  Young  Worthy,  as  are  likewise  the  young 
women  with  whom  they  are  in  love,  and  Carlile's  Shamtown 
belongs  to  the  same  family  as  Sir  Novelty  Fashion,  though  he  is 
much  more  crudely  portrayed.  So  too,  the  jealousy  of  Elder 
Worthy  in  regard  to  Hillaria  and  Sir  Novelty  is  very  much  like 
that  of  Elder  Wealthy  in  regard  to  Sophia  and  Shamtown.  So 
great  is  the  similarity  that,  notwithstanding  his  denial,  one  must 
believe  that  Gibber  deliberately  used  the  situation  and  characters 
as  a  basis  for  his  own,  though  he  did  not  copy  the  language, 
and  has  made  an  entirely  new  and  original  thing  out  of  his 
source. 

So  great  was  the  failure  of  his  second  play  that  Gibber  refuses 
to  mention  it  in  his  Apology  and  omitted  it  from  the  collected 
edition  of  his  plays  in  1721.  Woman's  Wit,  or  The  Lady  in  Fash- 
ion was  acted  at  Drury  Lane  in  1697,  but  met  with  a  most  un- 
favorable reception,  though  in  management  of  the  plot  it  is  not 
inferior  to  a  great  many  plays  whose  success  was  much  greater. 

Carlile's  Fortune  Hunters  (1689)  and  Mountford's  Greenwich 
Park  (1691)  have  been  suggested  as  the  sources  of  that  part  of  the 
plot  in  which  Young  Rakish  and  Major  Rakish  appear,  but  this 
is  only  partially  true.  In  The  Fortune  Hunters  the  father  and  son 
are  rivals  for  a  young  woman,  in  Woman's  Wit  she  is  an  elderly 
widow;  in  both,  the  son  has  obtained  five  hundred  pounds  from 
the  father.  But  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  these  situations 
are  superficially  similar  the  characters  and  the  details  of  the 
action  are  so  different  that  it  does  not  seem  possible  that  there  can 
be  any  connection  between  the  two  plays.  There  does  seem  to  be 
a  more  valid  reason  for  affirming  the  influence  oi  Greenwich  Parkin 
the  play.  The  likeness  of  Sir  Thomas  Reveller  and  Young  Rev- 
el-er  to  Old  Rakish  and  Young  Rakish  is  so  great  that  Gibber 
must  have  had  them  in  mind,  but  the  differences  both  of  character 
and  action  are  such  that  it  seems  probable  that  he  was  attempting 
to  portray  two  characters  of  the  same  type  rather  than  try  ng  to 
copy  them.     In  Greenwich  Park  there  is  not  even  a  superficial 


18  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

similarity  of  situation  to  Woman  s  Wit}'^  The  sub-action  of 
Woman's  Wit  was  separated  and  acted  successfully  at  Drury  Lane 
in  1707  as  The  School  Boy. 

Love  Makes  a  Man  was  acted  at  Drury  Lane  in  1701,  and  was 
published  the  same  year.  It  continued  to  be  played  until  1828. 
It  is  made  from  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  The  Elder  Brother  and 
The  Custom  of  the  Country,  and  is  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  Gibber 
merely  to  provide  amusement.  Ost^^  points  out  that  this  play, 
though  it  has  no  original  literary  worth,  helped  continue  the  lit- 
erary tradition,  and  notices  it  in  connection  with  the  healthful 
influence  of  Gibber's  work  in  the  moralizing  tendency  of  the 
drama.  He  adds  that  Gibber's  plays  have  more  value  in  relation 
to  "kulturgeschichte"  than  in  aesthetic  interest.  That  is  en- 
tirely true  so  far  as  this  play  is  concerned;  various  parts  have  a 
purely  contemporary  interest,  or  are  an  indication  to  us  of  the 
state  of  dramatic  taste,  and  the  aesthetic  value  is  certainly  often 
inconsiderable.  When  Gibber  introduces  such  references  as 
"hatchet  face"  of  Glodio,  a  term  which  had  been  applied  to  Gibber 
himself,  who  played  the  part,  and  more  particularly  in  the  far- 
cical discussion  of  the  two  playhouses  in  the  fourth  act,  he  is  not 
even  attempting  to  write  anything  but  horseplay. 

By  the  omission  and  transposition  of  scenes,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  some  lines  of  his  own,  mainly  for  the  purpose  of  gaining 
probabihty,  as  Ost  has  pointed  out.  Gibber  has  condensed  The 
Elder  Brother  so  that  it  forms  practically  the  first  two  acts,  and 
The  Custom  of  the  Country  so  that  it  forms  the  last  three.  In  the 
main,  the  plays,  so  much  of  them  as  is  used,  are  followed  with  very 
few  changes,  and  the  whole  makes  a  sprightly  and  amusing,  if  not 
particularly  literary  comedy. 

The  change  of  place  and  the  introduction  of  an  entirely  new  set 
of  characters  with  fresh  plot  developments  are  dramatically 
faulty;  but  for  the  purpose  for  which  the  play  was  written  these 
faults  are  not  particularly  great.  To  join  the  plots  of  two  sep- 
arate plays  end  on  end  without  breaking  the  continuity  of  the 
story,  and  to  adjust  the  characters  so  that  there  is  no  glaring 
inconsistency,  is  surely  no  slight  feat. 


44.  Jacob,  Poetical  Register,  p.  38.  suggests  Otway's  Dare  Devil  (that  is,  The 
Atheist)  as  the  source  of  the  play,  but  it  would  take  a  vivid  imagination  to  see  the 
connection. 

45.  Das  Verhaeltniss  von  Gibber's  Lustspiel  Love  Makes  a  Man  zu  Fletcher's 
Dramen  The  Elder  Brother  und  The  Custom  of  The  Country,  p.  82. 


Croissant:  Collejj  Cibber        ^       ,.  19 

In  the  characterization  Cibber  has  made  some  changes.  These 
changes  appear  particularly  in  Eustace,  who  becomes  Clodio, 
Miramont,  who  becomes  Don  Lewis,  and  Elvira,  who  is  the  sister 
instead  of  the  mother  of  Don  Duart.  It  is  difficult  to  understand 
how  this  play  could  have  been  other  than  a  theatrical  success  with 
Bullock  to  interpret  the  farcical  obstinacy  of  Antonio,  Penkethman 
to  portray  the  humorously  choleric  Don  Lewis,  and  Cibber  as  the 
"pert  coxcomb,"  Clodio.     But  it  is  farce  rather  than  pure  comedy. 

Cibber  has  changed  these  plays  from  verse  to  prose,  except  in 
the  first  scene  between  Carlos  and  Angelina,  in  which  the  romantic 
seriousness  of  the  situation  leads  him  to  write  blank  verse,  which 
is  however  printed  as  prose. 

She  Would  and  She  Would  Not,  considered  by  Genest  as  "per- 
haps his  best  play,"  was  acted  atDrury  Lane,  November  26,  1702, 
and  continued  to  be  acted  frequently  as  late  as  1825.'*'^  The 
striking  similarity  of  the  two  plays  has  caused  the  suggestion 
that  Cibber's  play  is  based  on  Leanerd's  The  Counterfeits  (1678). 
The  similarity  indicates  a  common  source,  rather  than  that  Cib- 
ber drew  from  The  Counterfeits.  The  source  of  Cibber's  play  was 
no  doubt  The  Trepanner  Trepanned,  which  is  the  third  story  of 
John  Davies's  La  Picara,  or  The  Triumphs  of  Female  Subtilty, 
published  in  London  in  1665.'*^ 

This  play  is  amusing,  is  well  constructed,  and  while  it  is  not  of 
serious  import,  is  such  as  might  be  presented  today  with  success. 

Cibber  commenced  to  write  The  Careless  Husband  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1703,  but  laid  it  aside  because  he  despaired  of  finding  any 
one  to  take  the  part  of  Lady  Betty  Modish.  In  1704  he  again 
took  up  the  writing  of  the  play,  and  in  that  year  it  was  acted  at 
Drury  Lane  on  December  7;  and  it  was  published  in  1705.  It  was 
one  of  the  best  and  most  successful  plays  of  the  period.'^^  It  was 
charged  that  Cibber  received  direct  assistance  in  writing  the 


46.  It  was  acted  in  New  York,  January  15,  1883,  by  Miss  Ada  Rehan,  under 
the  management  of  Augustin  Daly.  See  Lowe,  Apology,  II,  289.  Genest  records, 
VI,  23,  that  when  it  was  performed  at  Covent  Garden  in  1778,  "the  applause  was  so 
strong  in  the  second  act,  that  the  performers  were  obliged  to  stop  for  some  time." 

47.  This  translation  of  three  French  novels,  whose  original  source  had  been 
Spanish,  was  issued  again  in  1712  as  Three  Ingenious  Spanish  Novels.  See  Chandler, 
Romances  of  Roguery,  New  York,  1899,  pp.  462-3.  These  novels  are  ultimately 
based  on  La  Garduna  de  Sevilla  of  Castillo  Solorzano.  It  is  also  to  be  noticed  that 
the  story  appears  in  La  Villana  de  Ballecas  by  Tirso  de  MoUna,  in  La  Ocasion 
fiace  al  ladron,  by  Moreto,  and  in  the  story  of  Aurora  in  Le  Sage's  Gil  Bias.  Dunlop, 
History  of  Prose  Fiction,  II,  475,  states  that  She  Would  and  She  Would  Not  is  taken 
from  Gil  Bias.     Gil  Bias  was  published  thirteen  years  later  than  Cibber's  play. 

48.  Wilkes,  General  View  of  the  Stage,  p.  40,  says  that  were  the  play  curtailed 
of  one  scene  he  "would  not  fail  to  pronounce  it  not  only  the  best  comedy  in  EngUsh, 
but  in  any  other  language." 


20  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

play,  but  he  denied  the  charge,  and  as  no  proof  was  oflFered,  Gibber 
is  no  doubt  to  be  beheved.  It  seems  to  have  no  hterary  source ; 
but  one  incident,  that  in  which  the  wife  finds  the  husband  and  her 
maid  asleep  in  easy  chairs,  is  said  to  have  been  suggested  to 
Cibber  by  Mrs.  Brett,  the  reputed  mother  of  the  poet  Savage, 
from   her  own  experience.^^ 

This  is  Gibber's  best  play  of  the  sentimental  type.  Its  plot  is 
consistent,  has  dramatic  probability,  and  is  serious  enough  in  in- 
terest to  have  real  reason  for  being.  The  characters  are  well 
conceived  and  well  portrayed.  In  style,  too.  Gibber  is  here  at  his 
best  and  the  dialogue  approaches  the  finest  of  the  period. 

The  Haymarket  opened  the  season  1706-7  under  Swiney,  and 
n  order  to  encourage  the  new  venture,  Lord  Halifax  headed  a 
subscription  for  the  revival  of  three  plays:  Shakspere's  Julius 
Caesar,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  King  and  No  King,  and  the 
comic  scenes  of  Dryden's  Marriage  a  la  Mode  and  A  Maiden 
Queen.  The  last  took  the  form  of  an  adaptation  called  The  Com- 
ical Lovers,  the  adaptation  being  the  work  of  Gibber.  It  was 
acted  February  4,  1707,  and  was  published  the  same  year.  The 
alteration  was  the  result  of  only  six  days'  labor,^^  and  Cibber 
claims  no  originality  in  it.     It  met  with  slight  success. 

The  Comical  Lovers  is  another  such  adaptation  as  Love  Makes  a 
Man.  Gibber  has  merely  taken  the  two  comic  threads  from  their 
serious  settings  and  interwoven  them,  first  a  scene  from  one  and 
then  a  scene  from  the  other,  with  only  the  changes  necessary  to 
join  them,  and  has  followed  his  sources  almost  word  for  word. 
Gibber  was  not  under  the  necessity  of  changing  verse  into  prose, 
as  he  had  done  in  Love  Makes  a  Man,  for  the  comic  sections  of 
Dryden  are  in  prose,  according  to  the  changed  convention  of  his 
time;  and  in  the  scene  between  Melantha  and  her  maid,  Gibber  has 
not  even  taken  the  trouble  to  alter  a  single  one  of  the  French 
words,  many  of  which  must  have  acquired  a  place  in  the  language 
and  been  in  good  use  by  Gibber's  time.  So  far  as  Gibber's  part  is 
concerned,  this  is  the  least  important  of  his  plays. 

The  Double  Gallant  was  acted  at  the  Haymarket,  November  I , 
1707,  but  was  apparently  not  successful  at  its  first  performance. 
The  Biographia  Dramatica^^  says: 

"In  a  letter  from  Booth  to  A.  Hill  we  learn  that  the  play,  at  its 

49.  Boswell's  Johnson,  edited  by  G.  Birkbeck  Hill,  London,  1891;  I,  201. 

50.  Preface  to  The  Double  Gallant. 

51.  II,  173. 


Croissant:  C alley  Cibher  21 

first  appearance  was,  as  he  expressed  it,  hounded  in  a  most  out- 
rageous manner.  Two  years  after,  it  was  revived,  met  with  most 
extravagant  success,  and  has  continued  a  stock  play  ever  since." 

Gibber  says  nothing  about  any  hounding  of  the  play,  but  as- 
cribes the  failure  of  the  piece  to  the  fact  that  the  Haymarket  was 
too  big  for  plays;  a  fact  that  he  thinks  caused  the  lack  of  success 
of  other  plays  as  well  as  his  own. 

In  regard  to  the  authorship,  Gibber  says:^^ 

"It  was  made  up  of  what  was  tolerable,  in  two,  or  three  others, 
that  had  no  Success,  and  were  laid  aside,  as  so  much  Poetical 
Lumber;  but  by  collecting  and  adapting  the  best  Parts  of  them  all, 
into  one  Play,  the  Double  Gallant  has  had  a  Place,  every  Winter, 
amongst  the  Publick  Entertainments,  these  Thirty  Years.  As  I  was 
only  the  Compiler  of  this  Piece,  I  did  not  publish  it  in  my  own 
Name." 

The  title  would  lead  one  to  suppose  that  it  is  taken  directly 
from  Gorneille's  Le  Galant  Double,  but  it  is  a  weaving  together  of 
Mrs.  Gentlivre's  Love  at  a  Venture,  which  is  an  adaptation  of 
Gorneille,  Burnaby's  Ladies  Visiting  Day,  and  the  Lady  Dainty 
action  from  Burnaby's  Reformed  Wife.  In  consolidating  such 
parts  of  these  three  plays  as  are  used,  the  crudities  of  the  first  two 
are  polished  off,  and  certain  additions  are  made  to  the  last.  These 
additions  consist  in  sections  of  the  dialogue,  in  the  changing  of 
Lady  Dainty's  lover  into  a  more  impetuous  wooer,  and  in  the  ad- 
dition of  the  lover's  disguise  as  a  Russian,  by  which  subterfuge  he 
wins  her.  The  introductory  scene,  taken  from  Love  at  a  Venture, 
is  much  more  lively  and  entertaining  in  Gibber's  play  than  in  the 
original,  and  Gibber  likewise  handles  more  adroitly  the  subterfuge 
of  the  hero's  arrest,  taken  from  the  same  play,  using  the  same  de- 
vice of  decoy  letters  that  he  uses  in  Woman  s  Wit.  In  the  work- 
ing over  of  Burnaby's  adaptation  of  the  Horner  episode,  which  he 
had  taken  from  Wycherley's  Country  Wife,  Gibber  has  entirely 
eliminated  the  unpleasant  features. 

This  play  is  the  same  sort  of  an  adaptation  as  his  working  over 
of  other  earlier  plays.  He  has  taken  such  scenes  as  he  wished, 
changed  the  names  of  the  characters,  and  introduced  sufficient 
lines  of  his  own  to  give  continuity  and  connection  to  the  various 
actions,  but  has  made  no  material  additions  whatever.     In  this 


52.     Apology,  I,  243. 


22  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

case  he  has  made  an  extremely  diverting  play,  very  superior  to 
his  originals. 

The  Lady's  Last  Stake,  which  seems  to  be  entirely  original,  was 
produced  at  the  Haymarket,  December  13,  1707,  when  it  was 
acted  five  times;  and  it  was  published  probably  early  in  the  next 
year.  It  continued  on  the  London  stage  until  1786,  and  was  last 
performed  at  Bath,  in  1813.  It  is  only  a  fair  comedy,  lacking  the 
qualities  of  style,  the  originality  in  the  conception  of  the  charac- 
ters, and  the  skilful  working  out  of  the  plot  that  had  character- 
ized Gibber's  two  earlier  plays  of  the  sentimental  type.  But  in 
whatever  way  the  plot  as  a  whole  may  be  lacking,  the  last  act 
has  plenty  of  liveliness;  there  complication  follows  complication 
and  humorous  incidents  follow  serious  with  great  rapidity. 

The  Rival  Fools,  published  in  quarto  in  1709  and  played  at 
Drury  Lane,  January  11,  1709,  is  an  alteration  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  Wit  at  Several  Weapons,  and  was  not  successful.  At 
its  first  presentation  it  was  acted  five  times,  and  was  revived 
only  once,  in  1712,  when  it  was  acted  twice.  The  Biographia  Dra- 
matical^ relates  the  following  incident  of  the  first  performance, 
the  events  of  which  may  be  compared  with  the  reception  accorded 
Thomson's  Sophonisba: 

"It  met,  however,  with  bad  success.  There  happened  to  be  a 
circumstance  in  it,  which,  being  in  itself  rather  ridiculous,  gave  a 
part  of  the  audience  an  opportunity  of  venting  their  spleen  on 
the  author;  viz:  a  man  in  one  of  the  earlier  scenes  on  the  stage, 
with  a  long  angling  rod  in  his  hand,  going  to  fish  for  Miller's 
Thumbs;  on  which  account  some  of  the  spectators  took  occasion 
whenever  Mr.  Gibber  appeared,  who  himself  played  the  character, 
to  cry  out  continually,  'Miller's  Thumbs.'  " 

Gibber  has  followed  the  original  quite  closely  so  far  as  the  plot 

is  concerned,  much  more  closely  than  would  be  inferred  from  the 

first  fines  of  the  prologue: 

"From  s])rightly  Fletcher's  loose  confed'rat  muse, 

Th'  unfinish'd  Hints  of  these  light  Scenes  we  chuse. 

For  with  such  careless  haste  his  Play  was  writ. 

So  unpersued  each  thought  of  started  Wit; 

Each  Weapon  of  his  Wit  so  lamely  fought 

That  'twou'd  as  scanty  on  our  Stage  be  thought. 

As  for  a  modern  Belle  my  Grannum's  Petticoat. 

So  that  from  th'  old  we  may  with  Justice  say. 

We  scarce  could  cull  the  Trimming  of  a  play. " 

63.  Ill,  209.  See  also  Thomes  Whincop's  Scanderbeg,  (1747),  p.  195.  An 
account  of  the  lives  and  writings  of  the  English  dramatists  is  annexed  to  this  play. 


Croissant:  C alley  Gibber  23 

In  spite  of  this  statement  by  Gibber  himself,  he  adds  practically 
nothing  to  the  plot,  and  in  the  dialogue  adds  merely  a  touch  here 
and  there. 

As  was  customary  in  altering  these  old  comedies  written  in 
verse,  the  verse  of  the  original  is  changed  into  prose,  and  as  is 
also  customary  in  all  of  Gibber's  alterations,  the  long  speeches  are 
broken  into  dialogue. 

The  character  of  Pompey  Doodle  is  somewhat  enlarged  in 
its  transformation  into  Samuel  Simple,  and  is  one  of  the  most 
amusing  elements  in  the  play.  The  treatment  is  distinctly  Jac- 
obean in  its  exaggeration  of  character,  and  the  reception  by  the 
audience  must  be  attributed  either  to  the  alteration  of  taste  on 
the  part  of  the  public,  or  to  the  personal  unpopularity  of  Gibber, 
for  the  role  is  well  written  and  Gibber  was  particularly  well  fitted 
to  act  the  part,  both  by  temperament  and  by  physical  qualities. 

The  Non-Juror  was  acted  at  Drury  Lane  on  December  6,  1717, 
with  a  prologue  by  Nicholas  Rowe,  poet  laureate,  and  was  pub- 
Ushed  in  1718.  At  the  time  of  its  first  presentation  it  had  the 
comparatively  long  run  of  twenty-three  performances,  and  was 
revived  at  Drury  Lane  and  Govent  Garden  in  1745,  when  its 
political  meaning  was  again  pertinent. 

The  play  came  at  a  time  of  great  political  stress,  so  that  it  was 
but  natural  that  its  strong  Whig  and  anti-Gatholic  sentiments 
should  arouse  the  greatest  antagonism.^^  This  antagonism  was 
not  only  voiced  in  the  many  pamphlets  issued  at  the  time,  but 
no  doubt  affected  the  general  attitude  toward  Gibber  in  his  later 
life.  Gibber,  in  his  first  letter  to  Pope,  states  that  one  of  his 
enemies  went  so  far  as  to  write  a  pamphlet  whose  purport  was 
that  The  Non-Juror  constituted  a  subtle  Jacobite  libel  against  the 
government.  He  dedicated  the  play  to  the  king  when  it  was 
published,  and  for  this  he  received  a  gift  of  two  hundred  pounds. 
Gibber  was  not  burdened  in  mind  because  he  had  offended  the  losing 
party,  and  any  inconvenience  he  may  have  felt  was  amply  repaid 
by  the  pension  and  laureateship  which  later  came  as  his  reward. 

The  Non-Juror  is  based  directly  on  Moliere's  Tartuffe,  though 
two  plays  on  the  same  theme  had  previously  appeared  in  English: 
Growne's    English    Friar     (1689),    and     Medbourne's    Tartuffe 


64.  Following  the  Scottish  rebellion  in  1715,  Lord  Derwentwater  and  Lord 
Kenmure  were  executed,  February  24,  1716.  The  king's  pardon,  which  excepted 
forty-sev3a  classes  of  offenders,  ap'.>"^'xrs  in  Th-  H'storical  Register  for  1717,  II,  247; 
so  tnat  the  excitement  caused  by  tr;u  ruO-iiiio;;  coatiuued  for  some  time.  Doran's 
London  in  Jacobite  Times  discusses  this  period  in  a  most  interesting  manner. 


^4  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

(1670),  the  latter  a  direct  adaptation  of  Moliere's  play.  This 
Tartujfe  was  revived  during  the  summer  season  of  1718  at  Lin- 
coln's Inn  Fields,  and  was  published  while  Gibber's  play  was  still 
running,  with  an  advertisement  that  in  it  "may  be  seen  the  plot, 
characters,  and  most  part  of  the  language  of  The  Non-Juror." 
This  statement  is  true  only  in  that  the  two  plays  by  Medboarne 
and  Gibber  are  based  on  Moliere,  and  was  made  to  discredit 
Gibber's  claim  to  originality  in  the  adaptation. 

Gibber  was  no  doubt  familiar  with  Medbourne's  play,  but  he 
used  Moliere  as  a  basis,  and  owed  practically  nothing  to  any 
play  other  than  the  Tartujfe  of  Moliere.  Gibber  may  have  de- 
rived the  suggestion  of  the  reformation  of  Gharles  from  the  cor- 
responding character  in  Medbourne's  play,  but  his  manner  of 
carrying  out  this  reformation  and  the  difference  in  the  qualities 
of  the  characters  in  the  two  plays  make  this  part  an  original  cre- 
ation. 

In  the  edition  of  Growne  in  the  series  of  The  Dramatists  of  the 
Restoration,  the  editors  maintain  Gibber's  greater  indebtedness  to 
Growne  than  to  Moliere,  in  a  way  that  makes  one  doubt  whether 
they  had  ever  read  either  Moliere  or  Gibber.  So  far  as  plot  is 
concerned  there  is  absolutely  no  resemblance,  except  that  in  both 
a  priest  attempts  to  seduce  a  decent  woman.  The  characters, 
style,  and  management  are  both  different  and  inferior  in  Growne, 
although  some  slight  similarity  may  be  discovered  in  the  attempt 
of  Finical  and  Dr.  Wolf  to  allay  the  consciences  of  the  respective 
objects  of  their  attentions.  As  suggested  by  Van  Laun,  Father 
Finical,  like  Dr.  Wolf,  is  based  on  Tartuffe. 

Gibber  has  handled  his  sources  very  freely,  and  in  some  par- 
ticulars has  improved  both  the  plot  and  the  characters.  That 
is  not  to  say  that  The  Non-Juror  is  a  greater  play  than  Moliere's 
Tartuffe,  for  as  a  whole  it  is  not.  The  parts  of  Dorine,  who  in 
Tartuffe  is  the  life  and  source  of  the  humor,  of  Gleante  ,and  of 
Madame  Pernelle,  are  omitted,  but  the  part  of  Mariane  is  en- 
livened into  one  of  the  best  coquettes  of  the  stage.  The  other 
characters  and  incidents  correspond  in  The  Non-Juror  and  Mol- 
iere's Tartuffe,  though  the  denouement  is  more  artistically  handled 
in   Gibber. 

The  Refusal,  an  adaptation  of  Moliere's  Les  Femmes  Savantes, 
published  in  1721,  was  acted  at  Drury  Lane,  February  14,  1721, 
and  had  a  run  of  six  performances.     Moliere's  play  had  been  ad- 


Croissant:  C alley  Cibber  25 

apted  by  Wright  as  The  Female  Virtuosoes  in  1693,  and  this  play 
was  revived  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  on  January  10,  1721,  to 
anticipate  The  Refusal.  In  like  manner  with  the  effort  to  dis- 
credit Gibber's  hand  in  The  Non-Juror,  though  in  this  case  after 
the  run  of  Gibber's  play  was  over,  Gurll  published,  with  a  dedi- 
cation to  Gibber,  "the  second  edition  of  No  Fools  Like  Wits,^^  as 
it  was  acted  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  or  The  Refusal,  as  it  was  acted 
at  Drury  Lane." 

In  his  adaptation  Gibber  has  made  more  changes  than  is  usual 
with  him,  both  in  plot  and  in  character;  and  in  the  dialogue  he  has 
anglicized  the  idiom  to  an  extent  not  found  in  his  adaptations  of 
tragedies  from  the  French. 

Moliere's  comedy  is  a  satire  on  false  learning  in  men  as  well  as 
in  women,  while  Gibber  has  added  some  satire  on  business  trickery, 
in  the  same  way  that  he  added  political  satire  in  his  adaptation  of 
Tartuffe.  Gibber  has  supplied  the  elder  daughter  with  a  success- 
ful suitor,  and  the  denouement  is  brought  about  by  different, 
more  complicated,  and  more  characteristically  English  means. 
In  the  incident  in  Moliere's  play  in  which  Belise  takes  the  love  of 
Glitandre  to  herself,  Gibber  substitutes  the  mother  for  Belise, 
omits  the  maid,  along  with  her  impertinences,  and  adds  some  slight 
original  incidents. 

Trissotin,  the  poet,  becomes  one  of  the  typical  would-be  wits 
of  English  comedy,  and  Ghrysale  is  changed  to  a  typical  pro- 
moter. In  Moliere,  Ghrysale  is  a  purely  humorous  character, 
whose  vacillation  and  lack  of  force  were  no  doubt  very  laughable 
on  the  stage;  Sir  Gilbert,  his  equivalent  in  Gibber's  play,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  in  no  way  a  weakling  and  is  in  no  way  admirable  or 
a  source  of  laughter,  but  embodies  a  satire  on  contemporary 
business  practices. 

The  directness  and  simplicity  of  Moliere's  play,  the  unity  of 
tone  and  plot,  give  way  in  Gibber  to  complication  of  plot  and 
character,  in  which  the  whole  piece  loses  the  delightful  quality  of 
the  humor  of  the  original. 

The  Provoked  Husband  was  presented  at  Drury  Lane,  January 
10,  1728,  and  had  a  run  of  twenty-eight  nights.  There  \vas  an 
unsuccessful  attempt  on  the  part  of  Gibber's  enemies  to  damn  the 
play  on  the  first  night;  the  interruptions  were  so  great  that  during 
the  fourth  act  the  actors  were  compelled  to  stand  still  until  it  was 


55.     The  second   title  of   The  Female    Virtuosoes. 


26  University  of  Ka7i.sas  Humanistic  Studies 

quiet  enough  for  them  to  be  heard.  On  January  31,  Gibber  pub- 
lished Vanbrugh's  unfinished  play  and  his  own  completion  of  it. 
The  critics,  who  had  condemned  the  play  unmercifully,  especially 
the  supposed  additions  of  Gibber,  found,  when  the  plays  were 
published,  that  it  was  not  Gibber  but  Vanbrugh  they  had  been 
condemning.  According  to  Gibber,^^  on  the  twenty-eighth  night 
the  play  took  in  one  hundred  and  forty  pounds,  a  greater  amount 
than  had  been  taken  in  at  the  last  night  of  any  play  for  fifty 
years. 

Vanbrugh's  Journey  to  London  consists  of  four  acts,  the  first 
two  practically  complete,  but  the  last  two  apparently  unfinished. 
Gibber  has  used  practically  all  that  Vanbrugh  left,  omitting  the 
trip  to  the  theatre  in  the  last  part  of  Act  II,  and  adding  much 
of  his  own  to  the  whole  play.  He  has  interspersed  his  additions 
between  the  parts  of  Vanbrugh's  play,  and  has  changed  very 
little  of  the  Vanbrugh  part,  except  to  "water  it  down"  where  it 
had  been  too  strong  for  the  changed  taste  of  the  theatre  goers. 

Gibber's  additions  to  Steele's  Conscious  Lovers  are  mentioned  on 
a  later  page  of  these  Studies. 

Several  of  Gibber's  comedies  were  translated  into  foreign 
tongues :  in  German  The  Double  Gallant  appeared  as  Der  doppellte 
Liebhaber,  translated  by  Johann  Friedrich  Jiinger  and  published 
in  Leipzig  in  1786,  The  Careless  Husband  as  Der  sorglose  Ehemann, 
published  in  Gottingen  in  1750,  and  The  Provoked  Husband  as  Der 
erzilrnte  Ehemann  und  der  Land  junker,  published  in  Frankfurt 
in  1753;  in  French  The  Provoked  Husband  appeared  as  Le  Mari 
pousse  a  bout,  ou  le  voyage  a  Londres,  published  in  London,   1761. 

The  adaptations,  except  The  Non-Juror  and  The  Refusal,  seem 
to  have  been  produced  merely  to  furnish  amusement  which  should 
be  in  accordance  with  changed  stage  conditions  and  changed 
taste.  They  show  little  originality,  being  merely  the  stringing 
together  of  scenes  without  alteration,  though  Gibber  in  the  pro- 
logue to  The  Double  Gallant  says: 

"Nay,  even  alter'd  Plays,  like  old  houses  mended, 
Gost  little  less  than  new,  before  they're  ended; 
At  least,  our  author  finds  the  experience  true." 

His  method  seems  to  have  been  to  take  two  plays  of  an  older 
author,  often  plays  which  contained  both  a  serious  and  a  comic 

66.      Apology,    II,    58. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  21 

action,  to  select  such  scenes  as  suited  his  purpose,  and  to  join 
them  into  a  play,  either  alternating  the  scenes  of  the  separate 
plays  with  link  characters,  or  putting  the  two  plays  end  on  end, 
as  in  the  case  of  Love  Makes  a  Man.  This  latter  method  entailed 
much  greater  labor,  as  many  of  the  characters  were  made  by  con- 
solidating two  characters  from  different  plays. 

Gibber's  comedies,  which  constitute  his  best  and  most  impor- 
tant work,  may  be  divided  into  two  general  classes:  comedies  of 
manners  and  intrigue,  and  sentimental  comedies.  The  first  class 
includes  two  adaptations  from  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  which 
are  not  strictly  comedies  of  manners  but  are  more  closely  allied 
to  the  "comedy  of  humours,"  namely,  Love  Makes  a  Man  and  The 
Rival  Fools;  one  adaptation  made  out  of  two  plays  by  Dryden, 
The  Comical  Lovers;  two  from  Moliere,  The  Non-Juror  and  The 
Refusal,  into  both  of  which  he  introduced  contemporary  social 
and  political  interest;  and  three  other  plays.  Woman's  Wit,  She 
Would  and  She  Would  Not,  and  The  Double  Gallant,  the  last  of 
which  takes  its  title,  if  not  its  plot,  from  Corneille's  Le  Galant 
Double.  The  sentimental  comedies,  in  which  form  Cibber  was 
one  of  the  very  first  to  write,  are  Love's  Last  Shift,  The  Careless 
Husband,  The  Lady's  Last  Stake,  and  The  Provoked  Husband,  the 
last  being  a  completion  of  Vanbrugh's  Journey  to  London.  The 
first  class  consists  almost  altogether  of  adaptations;  the  second 
class  is  essentially  original. 


II 


GIBBER    AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SENTIMEN- 
TAL COMEDY 

1.     Gibber,  not  Steele,  the    Important  Figure  in  its 
Early  Development. 

The  fully  developed  form  of  sentimental  comedy  may  be  said 
to  begin  with  Steele's  Conscious  Lovers  (172,2)  and  to  end  with  the 
attack  upon  it  made  by  Goldsmith,  Foote,  and  their  followers. 
Goldsmith  was  "strongly  prepossessed  in  favour  of  the  poets  of 
the  last  age  and  strove  to  imitate  them,"^^  and  by  his  reintroduc- 
tion  of  humor  into  comedy  he  exerted  a  strong  influence  toward  the ' 
downfall  of  the  sentimental  type.  The  end  of  this  vogue  is  general- 
ly well  understood,  but  the  beginning  of  it  has  not  been  investi- 
gated with  the  same  thoroughness.  Steele  is  generally  given  the 
credit  of  being  the  innovator  who  reformed  the  stage,^^  although 
Ward  and  others  give  some  credit  to  the  work  of  Gibber.  The 
importance  of  Gibber  in  the  development  of  this  form  and  in  the 
moral  reformation  of  comedy,  the  effect  of  social  conditions, 
and  the  gradual  change  from  the  Restoration  type,  have  not  been 
fully  studied.  Golley  Gibber  was  the  most  important  writer  of 
comedy  in  preparing  the  way  for  the  new  form,  and  practically 
every  element  of  the  later  sentimental  comedy  is  found  in  his 
work.  But  Gibber  was  not  a  reformer  calling  on  his  age  to  repent; 
he  was  rather  answering  a  general  demand  of  his  time. 


57.  Preface  to   The  Good  Natured  Man. 

58.  See,  for  example,  Steele  and  The  Sentimental  Comedy,  by  M.  E.  Hare,  In 
Eighteenth  Century  Literature,  An  Oxford  Miscellany,  Oxford,  1909.  This  speaks 
of  "Sentimental  Comedy  invented  by  the  great  essayist  Sir  Richard  Steele." 


30  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

Three  stages  may  be  discerned  in  the  development  of  senti- 
mental comedy:  first,  that  in  which  the  morals  of  comedy  were 
purified  and  the  new  sentimental  material  was  intermixed  with  the 
old  humorous  material,  represented  by  the  work  of  Gibber;  second, 
that  in  which  the  sentimental  theme  is  presented  with  very  little 
comic  entertainment,  represented  by  The  Conscious  Lovers;  and 
third,  that  in  which  the  comedy  of  this  second  stage  degenerates 
and  in  which  the  work  becomes  artificial  and  lifeless,  represented 
by  the  plays  of  Holcroft  and  his  school. 

Sentimental  comedy  as  seen  in  its  second  phase  may  be  briefly 
described  as  comedy  of  manners  in  which  the  main  action  tends  to 
inculcate  a  moral  lesson,  in  which  the  incidents  no  longer  deal 
with  illicit  intrigues,  and  in  which  the  action  is  complicated  by 
distressingly  pathetic  situations.  The  chief  characters  are 
generally  serious  and  supersensitive  in  regard  to  such  matters  as 
filial  duty,  honor,  and  the  like;  and  while  these  persons  are  in  no 
need  of  being  reformed,  their  exaggerated  conceptions  of  honor 
have  caused  them  to  act  so  that  they  are  placed  in  an  equivocal 
position  and  they  appear  to  the  other  characters  as  vicious.  The 
language  is  chaste,  there  is  constant  introduction  of  extremely 
stilted  moralizing,  and  there  is  a  notable  absence  of  humor. 

Gibber's  work  in  other  lines  was  conventional  and  commonplace. 
It  is  true  that  his  Apology  is  lively  and  interesting,  and  his  pamph- 
lets in  reply  to  Pope's  attacks  are  keen  and  humorous  though 
vulgar,  but  the  rest  of  his  prose  is  extremely  conventional.  His 
poetry,  except  a  few  songs,  is  inexpressibly  poor.  Aside  from  one 
opera  in  which  he  takes  the  same  stand  in  regard  to  virtue  that  he 
does  in  his  comedies,  his  operas  are  merely  the  commonplace 
following  of  a  vogue.  His  tragedies  are  generally  imitative;  with 
two  exceptions  they  are  adaptations  of  Gorneille  or  Shakspere. 
His  farces  are  about  equal  in  merit  to  his  poetry,  and  are  devoid 
of  originality. 

Nor  does  Gibber's  life  indicate  the  qualities  that  appear  in  his 
sentimental  comedies.  The  moral  standard  he  displays  in  his 
pamphlets  in  reply  to  Pope  is  far  from  high,  and  from  the  testi- 
mony of  his  contemporaries  concerning  his  personal  character  it 
would  seem  that  he  was  far  from  being  the  sort  of  man  who 
would  set  about  reforming  anything.  And  in  all  probability  he 
would  not  have  done  so  if  there  had  not  been  a  general  public 
movement  in  that  direction. 


Croissant:  Colleij  Cibber  31 

2.     Sentimental  Comedy  a  Product  of  Various  Forces. 

But  sentimental  comedy  did  not  spring  full  grown  from  the 
brain  of  a  single  man.  Nor  was  it  the  result  of  a  single  revolu- 
tionary force.  Sentimental  comedy  resulted  from  gradual  modifi- 
cations of  the  drama  of  the  time,  developing  from  the  prevalent 
type  little  by  little  until  it  finally  appeared  as  an  independent  form. 
The  reform  of  the  stage  was  not  an  isolated  phenomenon,  nor  was 
it  directly  the  result  of  the  attacks  made  by  Collier  and  others. 
Rather  are  all  these  the  result  of  a  changed  public  conscience, 
which  was  manifested  not  merely  in  literature  and  on  the  stage, 
but  in  the  Revolution  of  1688  and  a  subsequent  social  reformation 
as  well. 

Immediately  after  the  Restoration  there  may  be  discovered 
two  elements  in  the  Hfe  of  the  nation  which  had  an  influence  both 
on  the  form  and  on  the  content  of  literature.  On  the  one  side 
was  the  court,  whose  standards  affected  both  the  form  and  content 
in  the  direction  of  foreign  models.  Through  the  long  period  of 
exile  on  the  continent,  Charles  and  his  followers  had  become  foreign 
in  their  literary  taste  and  they  had  great  influence  in  the  direction 
of  a  French  type  as  regards  form ;  and  because  of  the  low  and  vicious 
standards  of  living  prevalent  at  court  their  influence  stimulated 
the  sympathetic  handling  of  low  and  vicious  subjects. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  were  the  people,  strictly  native  in 
their  preference,  who  influenced  the  drama  in  the  direction  of  native 
standards  in  form,  and  Puritan  standards  in  content.  As  to  the 
form  of  comedy,  there  was  nothing  essentially  antagonistic  in  these 
two  influences ;  the  one  could  easily  combine  with  the  other  so  that 
a  new  thing,  congruous  and  consistent,  might  result;  but  in  the 
material  presented  antagonism  was  bound  to  arise  and  soon  did 
arise.  In  the  development  of  sentimental  comedy  from  the  type 
which  predominated  during  and  after  the  Restoration,  there  was 
not  at  first  any  modification  in  structural  elements;  the  comedy 
of  manners  was  adopted,  so  far  as  form  was  concerned;  the  change, 
which  was  gradual  and  was  a  direct  response  to  changed  social 
and  moral  conditions,  was  at  first  entirely  in  the  matter  of  content. 
Tl.i  change  first  appears  in  the  sincere  reformation  of  the  hero 
at  the  end  of  the  play;  then  in  the  attitude  towards  cuckoldom, 
which  Restoration  comedy  had  treated  as  a  humorous  fact;  and 
then  in  the  character  of  the  language,  which  was  altered  in  the 
direction  of  moral  decency. 


32  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

Under  Charles  II  and  James  II  the  court,  on  which  the  theatre 
depended  for  its  right  to  live  and  also  for  its  patronage,  was  vicious 
and  depraved.  Its  one  grace  was  wit,  and  that  it  had  in  a  super- 
lative degree. 

3.    Progress   in   English   Society. 

The  people  in  general,  except  the  court  and  those  more  or  less 
fashionable  classes  of  society  which  would  naturally  follow  it, 
were  not  affected  by  this  mode.  They  learned  to  despise  Charles 
II  personally  because  of  his  lack  of  honor  and  morals,  and  hated 
his  followers  as  well  as  their  mode  of  life.  In  the  city  the  Puritan 
element,  which  was  "at  once  the  most  substantial  and  sober" 
part  of  the  community,  began  to  exercise  some  of  the  same  control 
of  manners  and  morals  that  it  had  practised  under  the  common- 
wealth, and  checked  the  constant  disregard  of  its  moral  principles 
by  the  court. 

But  even  during  this  corrupt  time  there  were  manifestations 
of  activity  on  the  part  of  other  elements  of  society,  which  looked 
toward  the  betterment  of  conditions.  In  the  life  of  the  state 
there  were  events  which  made  for  general  progress  and  a  more 
moral  life  among  all  the  people.  With  special  reference  to  the 
regulation  and  restraint  of  the  theatre,  certain  elements  in 
Parliament  attempted,  in  1669,  to  tax  the  playhouses,  which  were 
situated  in  the  disreputable  part  of  town  and  had  become  centers 
of  prostitution;  but  the  ministers  of  the  king  intervened  and  the 
attempt  to  compel  some  restraint  was  unsuccessful. 

In  the  reigns  of  William  and  Mary  and  of  Anne  a  reaction 
is  seen  in  the  life  of  the  court,  and  there  appears  a  still  greater 
progress  in  all  classes  of  society. 

The  expulsion  of  the  Stuarts  brought  about  certain  very  positive 
results  which  made  for  progress  in  all  directions.  So  too  the  princi- 
ple of  natural  action  and  reaction  was  operating;  but,  considering 
the  historical  circumstances,  it  was  only  to  be  expected  that  the 
reaction  toward  a  more  moral  and  saner  view  of  life  should  be  less 
marked  and  less  rapid  than  the  preceding  reaction  from  Puri- 
tanism. 

Until  after  the  downfall  of  the  Stuarts,  the  Protestants  in  England 
had  never  been  united;  but  after  that  event  even  Presbyterians 
joined  with  ecclesiastics  of  the  Church  of  England  in  public  cere- 
monies on  terms  of  friendship.     Now  that  the  question  of  political 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  S3 

and  religious  supremacy  was  permanently  settled,  the  Protestants 
were  free  to  turn  to  some  of  the  questions  which  are  popularly 
supposed  to  be  the  real  objects  of  religious  organizations — worship 
and  the  encouragement  of  right  living.  However  far  it  may  have 
failed  to  measure  up  to  modern  ideas  in  these  respects,  the  church 
now  began  to  be  a  greater  moral  force. 

The  court  became  a  very  different  sort  of  place.  However 
far  William  might  fall  short  of  middle  class  standards  of  today, 
he  was  a  very  different  sort  of  man  from  Charles  or  James,  and 
had  a  very  different  influence.  As  opposed  to  the  Catholicism  of 
the  Stuarts,  he  was  a  Presbyterian.  Instead  of  haunting  the  theatre, 
where  Charles  found  more  than  one  mistress  among  the  actresses, 
William  never  even  showed  himself  at  the  theatre.  Because  of 
William's  prolonged  absences  on  the  continent,  during  which  Mary 
reigned  in  her  own  right,  the  person  of  the  queen  became  more  im- 
portant than  in  former  reigns.  Mary  "had  been  educated  only 
to  work  embroidery,  to  play  on  the  spinnet,  and  to  read  the  Bible 
and  the  Whole  Duty  of  Man' '^^  "Her  character  was  unimpeachable, 
and  by  the  influence  of  the  king  and  queen  the  whole  court  became 
most  proper,  even  if  it  was  somewhat  dull."  But  unlike  her 
husband,  she  went  frequently  to  the  theatre,  where  she  showed 
special  favor  for  Shadwell  and  where  she  ordered  such  plays  as 
The  Old  Bachelor,  The  Double  Dealer,  and  The  Committee.  It 
must  be  admitted  that  Mary's  taste  in  regard  to  plays  did  not 
show  great  literary  or  moral  discrimination. 

Both  under  William  and  Mary  and  under  Anne  the  court  took 
positive  grounds  on  moral  questions.  In  Evelyn's  Diary  for 
February  19,  1690,  we  read: 

"The  impudence  of  both  sexes  was  now  become  so  greate  and 
so  universal,  persons  of  all  ranks  keeping  their  courtesans  publicly, 
that  the  King  had  lately  directed  a  letter  to  the  Bishops  to  order 
their  Cleargy  to  preach  against  that  sin,  swearing,  &c.  and  to  put 
the  Ecclesiastical  Laws  in  execution  without  any  indulgence. " 

Mary,  on  July  9,  1691,  wrote  to  the  justices  of  the  peace  directing 
that  they  execute  all  laws  against  the  profanation  of  the  Sabbath, 
and  even  went  so  far  as  to  have  constables  stationed  on  street 
corners  to  capture  pies  and  puddings  that  were  being  taken  to 
the  bakers  to  be  cooked  on  that  day.     In  1697  and  1698  King 


59.     Macaulay,  History  of  England,  Chapter  VII. 


SJf.  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

William  issued  two  orders  concerning  the  acting  of  anything 
contrary  to  good  morals  or  manners.  Queen  Anne,  who  never 
went  to  the  public  theatre,  made  frequent  proclamations  against 
immoral  plays,  masked  women,  and  the  admittance  of  spectators 
behind  the  scenes,  and  in  1703  she  issued  a  proclamation  against 
vice  in  general. 

Altogether,  the  forces  of  the  court  and  of  the  government  were 
acting  in  accord  to  suppress  the  abuses  which  their  predecessors 
had  countenanced  both  by  favor  and  by  participation. 

But  however  potent  may  have  been  the  influence  of  the  court, 
the  real  movement  for  social  reform  came  from  the  people,  whose 
will  the  court  was  really  carrying  out.  The  movement  on  the 
part  of  the  people  was  forwarded  by  the  rise  of  various  societies 
which  were  established  for  moral,  philanthropic,  and  religious 
purposes.  "^^ 

The  Society  for  the  Reformation  of  Manners,  inaugurated  by 
a  small  number  of  gentlemen  in  1692,  was  probably  the  most  influ- 
ential and  best  known  of  these  organizations.  It  was  organized 
primarily  for  the  purpose  of  informing  on  evildoers,  and  that 
there  might  be  no  criticism  concerning  their  sincerity,  the  fines 
were  paid  over  to  charity.  In  addition  to  carrying  on  this  work 
of  informing,  the  society  estabHshed  quarterly  lecture^  on  moral 
subjects,  secured  the  preaching  of  sermons  on  its  objects,  and  in 
1699  it  claimed  to  have  secured  thousands  of  convictions.®^  The 
church  was  brought  into  the  movement  by  Archbishop  Tenison's 
circular  to  the  clergy  encouraging  them  to  cooperate  with  the 
laity  in  the  movement.  This  movement  went  farther  than  the 
prosecution  of  overt  acts  against  morality,  for  in  1701-2  the 
players  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  were  prosecuted  for  uttering  impious, 
lewd,  and  immoral  expressions.®^ 


60.  During  the  reign  of  Charles  not  every  one  had  been  in  entire  sympathy  with 
the  state  of  the  theatre.  Evelyn,  in  a  letter  to  Viscount  Carnbury,  February  9, 
1664-1665,  in  speaking  of  the  acting  of  plays  on  Saturday  evenings  says:  "Plays 
are  now  with  us  become  a  licentious  excess,  and  a  vice,  and  need  severe  censors 
that  should  look  as  well  to  their  morality  as  to  their  lines  and  numbers." 

61.  Traill,  Social  England,  IV.  593. 

62.  The  Laureat,  p.  53.  "I  can  remember,  that  soon  after  the  publication  of 
Collier's  book,  several  informations  were  brought  against  the  players,  at  the  in- 
stance and  at  the  expense  of  the  Society  for  the  Reformation  of  Manners,  for  im- 
moral words  and  expressions,  contra  bonos  mores,  uttered  on  the  stage.  Several 
Informers  were  placed  in  the  pit.  and  other  parts  of  the  house,  to  note  down  the 
words  spoke,  and  by  whom,  to  be  able  to  swear  to  them  and  many  of  them  would 
have  been  ruined  by  these  troublesome  prosecutions,  had  not  Queen  Anne,  well 
satisfled  that  these  informers  lived  upon  their  oaths,  and  that  what  they  did.  pro- 
ceeded not  from  conscience,  but  from  interest,  by  a  timely  nolle  prosequi,  put  an 
end  to  the  inquisition." 


Croissant:  Colley  Gibber  S5 

4.  Collier. 
Collier's  attack  on  the  stage,  published  in  1698,  was  no  doubt 
a  potent  influence  in  crystallizing  public  opinion  in  regard  to  the 
drama,  but  it  does  not  stand  alone;  it  is  merely  a  sign  of  a  movement 
which  the  stage  had  begun  to  notice  and  profit  by  several  years 
previously.  During  the  year  1698  not  less  than  sixteen  books 
and  pamphlets  were  published  in  the  controversy.  Collier's 
book  had  great  influence  in  furthering  the  work  of  reformation; 
but,  low  as  was  the  tone  of  the  drama  at  the  time,  one  must 
confess  that  in  some  particulars  Collier  is  radical  and  far-fetched 
in  his  arguments  and  conclusions. 

Cibber,  though  he  had  two  years  previously  written  a  play  with 
a  distinct  reformatory  and  moral  purpose,  did  not  much  relish 
Collier's  attack  or  agree  with  it.  In  the  prologue  to  Xerxes 
he  intimates  that  Collier  might  prove  a  good  index  for  those  who 
desired  to  read  immoral  literature: 

"Thus  ev'n  sage  Collier  too  might  be  accus'd, 
If  what  h'as  writ,  thro'  ignorance,  abus'd: 
Girls  may  read  him,  not  for  the  truth,  he  says. 
But  to  be  pointed  to  the  bawdy  plays." 

In  The  Careless  Husband  we  find  Lord  Morelove  saying: 

"Plays  n.pw,  indeed,  one  need  not  be  so  much  afraid  of ;  for  since 
the  late  short-sighted  view  of  them,  vice  may  go  on  and  prosper; 
the  stage  dares  hardly  show  a  vicious  person  speaking  like  him- 
self, for  fear  of  being  call'd  prophane  for  exposing  him. " 

To  this  Lady  Easy  replies  that, 

"  'Tis  hard,  indeed,  when  people  won't  distinguish  between  what's 
meant  for  contempt,  and  what  for  example. " 

Perhaps  Gibber's  most  interesting  contribution  to  the  contro- 
versy is  contained  in  his  dedication  of  Love  Makes  a  Man,  pub- 
lished in  the  first  edition,  but  omitted  in  the  collected  edition 
of  his  plays: 

"But  suppose  the  stage  may  have  taken  too  loose  a  liberty.'* 
Is  there  nothing  to  be  said  for  it?  Have  not  all  sciences  been 
guilty?  Was  it  to  be  expected  in  a  reign  of  pleasure,  peace  and 
madness,  that  the  poets  should  not  be  merry?  Did  not  the  court 
then  lead  up  the  dance?  And  did  not  the  whole  nation  join  in  it? 
Was  it  not  mere  Joan  Sanderson,®^  and  did  not  the  lawn-sleeves. 


63.  The  "Joan  Sanderson"  was  a  dance  In  which  each  one  of  the  company  takes 
part.  It  began  by  the  first  dancer's  choosing  a  partner,  who  in  turn  chose  another, 
the  chain  continuing  until  each  one  had  danced  alone  and  with  a  partner.  See 
G.  O.  M.  Smith,  Fucus  Histriomastix ,  Introduction,  p.  xviii. 


36  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

cuflFs,  and  cassocks  fill  up  the  measure?  But  since  those  dancing 
days  are  over,  I  hope  our  enemies  will  give  us  leave  to  grow  wise, 
and  sober,  as  well  as  the  rest  of  our  neighbors:  Why  shall  we  not 
have  the  liberty  to  reform,  as  well  as  the  clergy,  and  lawyers? 
I  believe  upon  a  fair  examination  we  may  find,  that  prophaneness, 
cruelty,  and  passive  obedience,  are  now  less  than  ever  the  business 
of  the  stage,  the  bench  or  the  pulpit;  and  I  doubt  not,  but  we  can 
produce  examples  of  new  plays,  lawyers,  and  pastors  that  have  met 
wdth  success  without  being  obliged  to  immorality,  bribery,  or 
politics  .   .   . 

"Now  if  the  stage  must  needs  down,  because  'tis  possible  it 
may  seduce,  as  instruct;  the  same  rule  of  policy  might  forbid  the 
use  of  physic,  because  not  only  their  patients,  but  physicians 
themselves  die  of  common  diseases;  or  call  in  the  milled  crowns, 
because  they  are  but  so  many  patterns  for  coiners  to  counterfeit  by, 
or  might  as  well  suppress  the  Courts  of  Judicature,  because  some 
persons  have  suffered  for  what  a  succeeding  reign  has  made  a  new 
law,  that  makes  that  law  that  sentenced  them  illegal:  The  same 
conclusion  might  discountenance  our  religion,  because  we  some- 
times find  pride,  hypocricy,  avarice,  and  ignorance  in  its  teachers : 
So  that  if  our  zealous  reformers  do  not  stick  fairly  to  their  method 
w^e  may  in  time  hope  to  see  our  nation  flourish  without  either  wit, 
health,  money,  law,  conscience,  or  religion.    .   .  . 

"But  this  sort  of  reformation  I  hope  will  never  be  thoroughly 
wrought,  while  the  king,  and  the  Established  Church  have  any 
friends:  The  stage  I  am  sure  was  never  heartily  oppressed  but  by 
the  enemies  of  both." 

Though  Cibber  thought  Collier  extreme  and  unjust  in  his 
criticism,  his  own  attitude  concerning  the  abuses  of  the  stage  was 
hardly  less  censorious  than  Collier's,  but  he  blames  the  audiences 
for  the  low  moral  standards  of  the  entertainments: 

"However  gravely  we  may  assert,  that  Profit  ought  alw^ays 
to  be  inseparable  from  the  Delight  of  the  Theatre;  nay,  admitting 
that  the  Pleasure  would  be  heighten'd  by  the  uniting  them ;  yet, 
while  Instruction  is  so  little  the  Concern  of  the  Auditor,  how  can 
we  hope  that  so  choice  a  Commodity  wall  come  to  a  Market  w^here 
there  is  so  seldom  a  Demand  for  it? 

"It  is  not  to  the  Actor  therefore,  but  to  the  vitiated  and  low 
Taste  of  the  Spectator,  that  the  Corruptions  of  the  Stage  (of  what 
kind  soever)  have  been  owing."^"* 

His  own  attitude,  which  he  held  from  the  first  of  his  career  as  a 
dramatist,  may  be  illustrated  what  he  says  in  the  Apology:^^ 

"Yet  such  Plays  (entirely  my  own)  w^ere  not  w^anting  at  least, 
in  what  our  most  admired  Writers  seem'd  to  neglect,  and  without 

64.  Apology,  I,  85. 

65.  IMd.,  I,  194-5. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  37 

which,  I  cannot  allow  the  most  taking  Play,  to  be  intrinsically 
good,  or  to  be  a  Work,  upon  which  a  Man  of  Sense  and  Probity 
should  value  himself:  I  mean  when  they  do  not,  as  well  prodesse, 
as  deledare,  give  Profit  with  Delight!  The  Utile  Dolci  was,  of 
old,  equally  the  Point;  and  has  always  been  my  Aim,  however 
wide  of  the  Mark,  I  may  have  shot  my  Arrow.  It  has  often  given 
me  Amazement,  that  our  best  Authors  of  that  time,  could  think  the 
Wit,  and  Spirit  of  their  Scenes,  could  be  an  Excuse  for  making  the 
Looseness  of  them  pubUck.  The  many  Instances  of  their  Talents 
so  abused,  are  too  glaring,  to  need  a  closer  Comment,  and  are 
sometimes  too  gross  to  be  recited.  If  then  to  have  avoided  this 
Imputation,  or  rather  to  have  had  the  Interest,  and  Honour  of  Virtue 
always  in  view,  can  give  Merit  to  a  Play ;  I  am  contented  that 
my  Readers  should  think  such  Merit,  the  All,  that  mine  have  to 
boast  of. — Libertines  of  mere  Wit,  and  Pleasure,  may  laugh  at 
these  grave  Laws,  that  would  limit  a  lively  Genius:  But  every 
sensible  honest  Man,  conscious  of  their  Truth,  and  Use,  will  give 
these  Ralliers  Smile  for  Smile,  and  shew  a  due  Contempt  for  their 
Merriment." 

Davies  tells  us:^® 

"So  well  did  Cibber,  though  a  professed  libertine  through  life, 
understand  the  dignity  of  virtue,  that  no  comic  author  has  drawn 
more  delightful  and  striking  pictures  of  it.  Mrs.  Porter,  on  reading 
a  part,  in  which  Cibber  had  painted  virtue  in  the  strongest  and 
most  lively  colors,  asked  him  how  it  came  to  pass,  that  a  man, 
who  could  draw  such  admirable  portraits  of  goodness,  should 
yet  live  as  if  he  were  a  stranger  to  it? — 'Madam,'  said  Colley, 
'the  one  is  absolutely  necessary,  the  other  is  not. '  " 

Possibly   this   inconsistency   in   personal   conduct   and   public  1 

confession  explains  why  comedies  which  aimed  to  teach  lessons  of  \ 

virtue  were  sentimental  and  did  not  ring  true.     The  men  who  ^ 

wrote  them  wrote  from  the  head  and  not  from  the  heart,  in-  i> 

fluenced  by  a  growing  public  demand  and  without  real  sincerity  \ 
or  conviction. 

5.  Characteristics  of  Restoration  Comedy. 
Restoration  comedy  up  to  about  1696,  while  it  was  essentially 
a  native  development,  was  influenced  both  in  technique  and  in 
content  by  the  drama  to  which  the  court  had  been  accustomed 
in  its  exile  in  France.  The  Jonsonian  comedy  was  developing 
both  in  the  period  immediately  preceding  the  Commonwealth 
and  during  the  Restoration  into  the  same  sort  of  thing  that  we 
have  here,  and  Shadwell,  poet  laureate  and  especial  favorite  of 


Dramatic    Miscellanies,    III,    432. 


38  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

Queen  Mary,  definitely  took  the  work  of  Jonson  as  his  model. 
The  Jonsonian  satire  had  thrown  emphasis  on  fundamental  traits 
of  human  nature,  but  in  this  later  type  satire  is  centered  on  manners, 
dress,  the  non-essential  elements  of  life,  though  the  characters 
continue  to  be  embodiments  of  single  traits.  Moliere,  whose  earliest 
effective  follower  in  England  was  Etherege,  taught  the  English 
writers  of  the  comedy  of  manners  to  aim  at  polish,  refinement 
of  style  and  dialogue,  and  his  influence  confirmed  the  tendency 
of  English  comedy  to  follow  the  unities  as  they  were  then  under- 
stood. Restoration  comedy,  then,  is  native  Jonsonian  comedy, 
influenced  by  the  comedy  of  Moliere.®'^  The  chief  literary 
sources  of  its  plots  are  the  comedies  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
of  Moliere,  of  Corneille,  and  Spanish  comedies  and  novels. 

Though  the  late  Elizabethans  had  been  gross  in  word,  there 
had  always  been  in  their  work  a  tendency  to  punish  vice  and  reward 
virtue,  or  at  least  to  make  vice  ridiculous.  But  in  the  Restoration 
this  grossness  becomes  grossness  of  word,  character,  and  idea, 
and  it  is  not  the  violator  of  virtue  that  is  made  ridiculous,  but 
his  victim.  The  Elizabethan  gaiety,  spontaneity,  healthy  over- 
flow of  spirits,  become  a  cynicism  which  is  absurd  in  its  artificiality 
and  deliberate  pose.  The  Jonsonian  reaction  from  earlier  Eliza- 
bethan romanticism  continues  its  advance  toward  realism. 

The  Restoration  dramatist  lacks  the  power  to  construct  effective 
plots.  He  is  able  to  handle  his  separate  incidents  with  skill, 
but  when  it  comes  to  sustaining  an  action  through  five  acts, 
he  fails.  His  chief  fault  lies  in  too  great  intricacy,  excessive 
elaboration,  and  complexity,  which  are  due  to  his  endeavor  to  tell 
too  many  stories.  In  the  construction  of  his  plays  he  commonly 
takes  two,  and  sometimes  three,  plays  from  Moliere,  or  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  to  form  one  play  of  his  own.  Hence  there  is  in  the 
handling  of  the  plot  a  lack  of  unity.  Furthermore,  in  his  extreme 
elaboration  of  single  situations,  which  one  must  admit  have  qualities 
to  make  them  lively  and  interesting  on  the  stage,  the  dramatist 
fails  in  the  great  essential  quality  of  probability;  if  one  regards 
the  unity  of  time,  he  makes  his  stories  impossible.  Lack  of 
sequence  is  caused  by  the  constant  interruption  of  conversation, 
which  is  brilliant  and  entertaining  in  itself,  but  has  nothing  to  do 
with   the   story. 


67.     See  Miles,  The  Influence  of  Moliere  on  Restoration  Comedy,  1910;  published 
after  this  paper  was  written. 


Croissant:  C alley  Cibber  89 

The  dramatist  tends  to  the  elaboration  of  stock  themes,  dealing 
with  the  pursuit  of  illicit  pleasure,  assignations,  and  love  intrigues. 
The  typical  story  might  be  stated  as  follows :  a  young  man  is  en- 
tangled with  one  or  more  women,  a  widow,  the  wife  of  an  elderly 
or  foolish  husband,  or  a  mistress  whom  he  is  keeping  or  who  is 
keeping  him,  and  while  he  is  carrying  on  these  intrigues  he  falls 
in  love  with  the  virtuous  young  woman  he  eventually  wins.  Some- 
times his  mistresses  object  to  his  marrying  some  one  else,  sometimes 
they  do  not,  and  in  the  latter  case  the  opposing  force  is  centered 
in  a  rapacious  guardian  or  some  other  complicating  person  or 
circumstance.  There  are  usually  many  minor  love  affairs, 
sometimes  legitimate,  sometimes  not,  and  usually  so  complicated 
that  it  is  diflScult  to  keep  the  various  threads  separate.  Collier 
did  no  injustice  when  he  said  that  "the  stage  poets  make  their 
principal  persons  vicious  and  reward  them  at  the  end  of  the  play." 

The  love  is  mere  sensuality.  There  is  tacit  acknowledgment 
that  the  men  will  be  untrue  to  their  wives  and  a  fear  on  the  part 
of  the  husbands  that  their  wives  will  cuckold  them.^^  This  fear 
is  not  because  of  any  moral  scruples,  but  is  merely  because  of  the 
ridicule  that  cuckoldom  brought  on  the  husband.  The  treatment 
is  frankly  gross,  licentious,  cynical. 

In  a  sense  this  treatment  is  highly  realistic;  to  this  extent, 
that  it  is  a  general  reflection  of  the  standards  and  manners  of  the 
life  of  the  court.  The  fashions  are  contemporary,  the  manners 
and  morals  are  those  of  the  upper  classes.  The  playwrights 
confine  themselves  to  a  limited  section  of  but  a  part  of  the  people. 
Social  and  religious  institutions  are  treated  so  as  to  make  them 
ridiculous  and  contemptible. 

That  any  other  treatment  would  have  been  diflScult  is  seen  by 
considering  the  relationship  existing  between  the  theatre  and  the 
court.  The  theatre  had  its  authority  for  existence  directly  from 
the  court,  one  theatre  receiving  its  license  from  the  King,  the  other 
from  the  Duke  of  York,  while  the  companies  of  actors  were  known 
as  the  King's  or  the  Duke's  servants. ^^  These  licenses  were  more- 
over revocable  at  the  pleasure  of  those  who  gave  them.  Con- 
troversies and  differences  within  the  theatre  were  often  settled 


68.  Celadon,  in  Dryden's  Marriage  a  la  Mode,  enters  marriage  with  the  distinct 
expectation  that  his  wife  will  be  untrue  to  him. 

69.  At  the  Restoration  ten  of  the  actors  were  attached  to  the  household  establish- 
ment as  the  king's  menial  servants,  and  ten  yards  of  scarlet  cloth  with  an  amount 
of  lace  were  allowed  them  for  liveries.  Tliis  connection  lasted  until  Anne's  time. 
Genest,  II,  362. 


JfO  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

personally  by  the  King  or  Duke,  and  Charles  is  said  to  have  sug- 
gested subjects  to  the  dramatists  in  many  instances.  With  so 
direct  and  personal  a  relation,  anything  other  than  compliance  with 
the  taste  of  the  court  could  result  in  nothing  but  the  downfall  of 
the  theatre.  The  theatre's  very  life  depended  on  its  selection 
and  presentation  of  themes  that  would  satisfy  and  reflect  the  taste 
of  the  most  morally  degraded  court  that  England  has  ever  had. 

The  characterization  in  these  plays  is  conventional  and  often 
vague.  For  example,  it  may  be  laid  down  as  an  almost  invariable 
rule  that  a  widow  is  never  virtuous.  In  the  embodiment  of  a 
single  trait  there  is  the  continued  tendency  to  exaggeration  seen 
in  the  "humourous"  characterization  of  Jonson,  with  the  same 
use  of  descriptive  names — Courtall,  Mrs.  Frail,  Lady  Wishfort, 
Justice  Clodpate — to  save  the  labor  of  characterization.  The 
characters  are  likewise  lacking  in  complexity  and  development. 

There  is  the  tendency  to  Jonsonian  division  of  characters  into 
dupes  and  dupers,'^  but  this  division  is  not  so  clear  as  in  Jonson, 
nor  is  the  division  based  on  the  essential  qualities  of  human 
nature,  but  is  rather  on  the  basis  of  wit  and  power  in  repartee. 
The  heroes  are  all  witty,  usually  wealthy,  popular,  and  their 
life  work  is  the  pursuit  of  women.  The  women  are  all  witty, 
beautiful,  and  all  rakes,  except  the  heroine,  and  even  the  heroines 
bid  fair  to  become  so  in  a  few  months  after  marriage.  The  hero 
or  heroine  of  one  play  might  be  the  hero  or  heroine  of  any  other 
play  so  far  as  any  distinctive  characterization  is  concerned. 

There  is  the  pretended  wit,  a  simpleton  who  apes  the  men 
of  wit  and  fashion,  who  thinks  himself  most  clever,  and  who  is 
perfectly  unconscious  of  the  fact  that  he  is  being  made  a  butt  for 
the  wit  of  the  sensible  characters.  Such  are  the  Dapperwits,  the 
Witwouds,  and  the  Tattles.  Somewhat  similar  is  the  fop  who 
imitates  the  French,  thinks  only  of  his  dress,  his  appearance,  and 
the  figure  he  makes.  He  is  all  ostentation,  is  entirely  self -centered 
and  simple  in  his  mental  processes,  but  is  really  not  such  a  fool  as 
one  imagines  at  first.  Etherege's  Sir  Fopling  Flutter,  and  Gibber's 
Sir  Novelty  Fashion — the  Lord  Foppingtons  of  The  Relapse  and 
The  Careless  Husband — are  two  well  drawn  presentations  of  this 
character.  An  interesting  female  type  is  the  Miss  Hoyden- 
Prue-Hippolyta  young  woman,  who  has  been  kept  in  secluded 


70.     Elizabeth  Woodbridge.  Studies  in  Jonson's  Comedies,  Yale  Studies  in  English, 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  Jf.1 

ignorance  of  the  world,  but  who  shows  a  sudden  ingenuity,  knowl- 
edge of  the  world,  and  desire  for  the  sensual  joys  of  life.  There 
are,  of  course,  the  elderly  cuckolds,  dominated  and  fooled  by  their 
wives,  and  the  wives  who  profess  virtue  but  do  not  practise  it. 
That  the  view  here  given  is  not  prejudiced  by  modern  standards 
may  be  seen  by  a  description  of  the  characters  by  one  of  the 
dramatists  themselves.  Shadwell  in  the  preface  to  The  Sullen 
Lovers  expresses  himself,  not  without  vigor: 

"But  in  the  Plays,  which  have  been  wrote  of  late,  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  perfect  Character,  but  the  two  chief  Persons  are 
commonly  a  Swearing,  Drinking,  Whoring,  RuflSan  for  a  Lover,  and 
an  impudent  ill-bred  Tomrig  for  a  Mistress,  and  these  are  the  fine 
People  of  the  play ;  and  . . .  almost  any  thing  is  proper  for  them  to  say ; 
but  their  chief  Subject  is  Bawdy,  and  Profaneness,  which  they  call 
Brisk  Writing,  when  the  most  dissolute  of  Men,  that  relish  those 
things  well  enough  in  Private,  are  shock'd  at  'em  in  Publick." 

The  dialogue,  which  often  interrupts  the  movement  of  the 
plot,  and  often  surpasses  in  interest  the  more  solid  quality  of 
representation  of  life,  is  usually  marked  by  the  most  brilliant 
and  biting  wit,  by  keenly  satiric  repartee,  and  by  epigrammatic 
polish.  The  dialogue  has  often  nothing  to  do  with  the  story, 
but  is  merely  the  exhibition  of  the  author's  ability  in  the  cynical 
treatment  of  contemporary  manners.  The  attitude  is  one  of 
satire  and  raillery  against  all  established  institutions,  against 
marriage,  the  manners  of  society,  the  Puritans,  the  newly  develop- 
ing sciences,  the  court,  dueling,  the  country  and  its  inhabitants, 
the  opera,  the  new  songs  and  novels,  the  affectation  of  foreign  airs, 
the  adoption  of  foreign  words,  poetry  and  dilettante  writing,  polite 
literary  conversation,  legal  abuses,  and  almost  everything  that  one 
can  conceive. 

The  locality  in  which  the  plays  are  set  is  extremely  narrow  at 
first,  being  confined  to  the  town;  for  most  of  the  plays  are  set  in 
London,  in  localities  familiar  to  the  audiences.  Within  the  class 
and  localities  to  which  the  comedy  restricts  itself,  it  is  a  most 
interesting  social  document;  but  it  must  always  be  remembered 
that  it  is  no  sense  representative  of  the  whole  people.  Sometimes 
we  are  taken  to  Spain  or  Italy,  but  it  is  Spain  or  Italy  only  in 
name,  the  people  and  the  customs  are  all  English.  The  scene  may 
sometimes  be  one  of  the  fashionable  watering  places  in  England; 
but  it  is  never  in  the  despised  country. 


J^2  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

Whether  one  agrees  with  it  or  not  it  is  well  to  keep  in  mind 
Lamb's  defense  in  his  essay  On  the  Artificial  Comedy  of  the  Last 
Century: 

"We  have  been  spoiled  with  .  .the  .  .drama  of  common  life;  where 
the  moral  point  is  everything;  where,  instead  of  the  fictitious 
half -believed  personages  of  the  stage  (the  phantoms  of  old  comedy) 
we  recognize  ourselves,  our  brothers,  aunts,  kinsfolk,  allies,  patrons, 
enemies, — the  same  as  in  life.  .  .  . 

"I  do  not  know  how  it  is  with  others,  but  I  feel  the  better  always 
for  the  perusal  of  one  of  Congreve's — nay,  why  should  I  not  add 
even  of  Wycherley's — comedies.  I  am  the  gayer  at  least  for 
it;  and  I  could  never  connect  those  sports  of  a  witty  fancy  in  any 
shape  with  any  result  to  be  drawn  from  them  to  imitation  in  real 
life.  They  are  a  world  of  themselves  almost  as  much  as  fairyland — 
But  in  its  own  world  do  we  feel  the  creature  is  so  very  bad? — The 
Fainalls  and  the  Mirabels,  the  Dorimants  and  the  Lady  Touch- 
woods, in  their  own  sphere,  do  not  offend  my  moral  sense;  in  fact 
they  do  not  appeal  to  it  at  all.  They  seem  engaged  in  their  proper 
element.  They  break  through  no  laws,  or  conscientious  restraints. 
They  know  of  none.  They  have  got  out  of  Christendom  into  the 
land — what  shall  I  call  it?— of  cuckoldry — the  Utopia  of  gallantry, 
where  pleasure  is  duty,  and  the  manners  perfect  freedom.  It  is 
altogether  a  speculative  scene  of  things,  which  has  no  reference 
whatever  to  the  world  that  is.  ...  He  [Congreve]  has  spread  a  priva- 
tion of  moral  light  .  .  .  over  his  creations;  and  his  shadows  flit 
before  you  without  distinction  or  preference.  Had  he  introduced  a 
good  character,  a  single  gush  of  moral  feeling,  a  revulsion  of  the 
judgment  to  actual  life  and  actual  duties,  the  impertinent  Goshen 
would  have  only  lighted  to  the  discovery  of  deformities,  which  now 
are  none,  because  we  think  them  none.  .  .  . 

"...  When  we  are  among  them  [the  characters  of  Congreve 
and  Wycherley],  we  are  amongst  a  chaotic  people.  We  are  not  to 
judge  them  by  our  usages.  No  reverend  institutions  are  insulted 
by  their  proceedings, — for  they  have  none  among  them.  No 
peace  of  families  is  violated, — for  no  family  ties  exist  among  them. 
No  purity  of  the  marriage  bed  is  stained, — for  none  is  supposed  to 
have  a  being.  .  .  .  There  is  neither  right  nor  wrong, — gratitude 
or  its  opposite, — claim  or  duty, — paternity  or  sonship.  .  .  . 

"The  whole  is  a  passing  pageant.  .  .  .  But,  Hke  Don  Quixote, 
we  take  part  against  the  puppets,  and  quite  as  impertinently.  .  .  . 
We  would  indict  our  very  dreams." 

6.     Beginnings  of  the  Change  in  the  Drama. 
Such  had  been  the  conditions  surrounding  the  drama  and  in 
the  drama  itself  before  the  reformation  began.     When  one  comes 
to  look  at  the  stage  and  the  audiences,  one  finds  very  little  indica- 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  ^3 

tion  of  change  at  first.  In  1682  there  seems  to  have  been  objec- 
tion to  London  Cuckolds  on  the  ground  of  indecency,  and  Ravens- 
croft  in  the  prologue  to  Dame  Dobson  (1682)  claims  to  have 
complied  with  the  objections  which  had  been  raised  by  making  his 
own  play  dull  and  civil.  In  1684  appeared  Southerne's  first 
comedy,  The  Disappointment,  which  he  calls  a  "play,"  and  in  this 
we  have  the  serious  treatment  of  the  marriage  relations  and  the 
preservation  of  a  wife's  chastity.  Throughout,  Southerne's 
tendency   was   towards   morality. 

In  1696  there  begins  a  real  and  easily  discernible  movement 
towards    the    moral    treatment    of    dramatic    themes.     The    She 
Gallants  (1696)  was  so  offensive  to  the  ladies  that  it  had  to  be 
withdrawn;  in  She  Ventures  and  He  Wins (1696)  the  man  who  would 
carry  on  an  amour  with  a  married  woman  is  exposed  and  tricked 
and  made  the  butt;  and  in  Mrs.  Mauley's  The  Lost  Lover  (1696) 
there  is  the  noticeable  introduction  of  a  virtuous  wife. 
In  1697,  the  epilogue  to  Boadicea,  a  tragedy,  tells  us  that 
"Once  only  smutty  jests  could  please  the  town. 
But  now  (Heav'n  help  our  trade)  they'll  not  go  down." 

Waterhouse^^  finds  traces  of  sentimentality  in  Vanbrugh's 
Aesop,  which  appeared  the  same  year.  Then  in  1698  matters 
were  brought  to  a  head  by  Collier,  and  we  find  Congreve's  Double 
Dealer  advertised  to  be  acted  "with  several  expressions  omitted," 
while  in  The  Way  of  the  World  (1700)  his  muse  is  somewhat 
more  chaste.  The  Provoked  Wife  was  altered,  probably  in  1706, 
so  that  the  clergy  might  not  seem  to  be  attacked. 

From  this  time  on  the  changed  attitude  was  increasingly 
manifest  in  the  new  plays,  though  the  old  were  still  acted  with 
little  or  no  change. 

In  The  State  of  the  Case  Restated^^  it  is  contended  that  the  royal 
patent  to  the  Drury  Lane  Theatre  was  given  to  Sir  Richard  Steele 
for  the  purpose  of  correcting  the  abuses  of  the  theatre,  but  that 
Sir  Richard  had  not  done  this;  in  fact  that 

"The  same  lewd  plays  were  acted  and  reviewed  without  any 
material  alteration,  which  gave  occasion  for  that  universal  com- 
plaint against  the  English  stage,  of  lewdness  and  debauchery, 
from  all  the  sober  and  religious  part  of  the  nation;  the  whole  business 
of  comedy  continuing  all  this  time  to  be  the  criminal  intrigues 


71.  The  Development  of  Sentimental  Comedy  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  Anglia, 

72.  The   Theatre,   II,  5H.     By  John   Dennis.     His  temper  and  prejudice  often 
destroy  the  value  of  his  writings  as  impartial  evidence,  but  in  this  case  he  is  right. 


Jf..!^  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

of  fornication  and  adultery,  ridiculing  of  marriage,  virtue,  and  in- 
tegrity, and  giving  a  favorable  turn  to  vicious  characters,  and 
instructing  loose  people  how  to  carry  on  their  lewd  designs  with 
plausibility  and  success:  thus  among  other  plays  they  have 
revived  The  Country  Wife,  Sir  Fopling  Flutter,  The  Rover,  The 
Libertine  Destroyer,  and  several  others,  and  it  is  remarkable,  that 
the  knight,  or  coadjutors,  had  condemned  Sir  Fopling  Flutter, 
as  one  of  the  most  execrable  and  vicious  plays  that  ever  was  perform- 
ed in  public." 

The  change  that  was  occurring  may  be  fairly  illustrated  by 
quotations  from  plays  by  Etherege  and  Steele,  which  are  character- 
istic of  the  alterations  not  only  as  to  morals  but  as  to  moralizing. 
In  speaking  of  marriage  Etherege  says,  "your  nephew  ought  to 
conceal  it  [his  marriage]  for  a  time,  madam,  since  marriage  has 
lost  its  good  name;  prudent  men  seldom  expose  their  own  reputa- 
tions, till  'tis  convenient  to  justify  their  wives  ;"^^  while  Steele's 
sentiment  is  that  "wedlock  is  hell  if  at  least  one  side  does  not  love, 
as  it  would  be  Heaven  if  both  did."'^'* 

7.  Gibber's  Comedies. 
Gibber  at  the  very  outset  of  his  career  as  a  dramatist,  in  Love's 
Last  Shift  (1696),  deliberately  attempted  to  reform  the  stage, 
and  that  the  audience  was  ready  for  the  innovation  is  shown 
by  the  way  it  was  received,  for  we  are  told  that  "never  were 
spectators  more  happy  in  easing  their  minds  by  uncommon  and 
repeated  plaudits.  The  honest  tears,  shed  by  the  audience, 
conveyed  a  strong  reproach  to  our  licentious  poets,  and  was  to 
Gibber  the  highest  mark  of  honor."^''  Davies  further  gives  Gibber 
the  credit  of  being  the  first  in  reforming  the  English  stage,  and 
of  founding  English  sentimental  comedy.  "The  first  comedy, 
acted  since  the  Restoration,  in  which  were  preserved  purity  of 
manners  and  decency  of  language,  with  a  due  respect  to  the  honor 
of  the  marriage-bed,  was  Golley  Gibber's  Lore's  Last  Shift,  or  The 
Fool  in  Fashion."^^  Gibber  himself  makes  no  claim  to  decency 
of  language,  nor  is  it  found  to  any  greater  extent  in  this  play  than 
in  the  other  plays  of  the  period.  Gertainly  there  can  be  nothing 
bolder  than  the  first  act,  or  the  epilogue,  which  reads  as  follows : 
"Now,  gallants,  for  the  author.  First,  to  you 
Kind  city  gentlemen  o'  th'  middle  row; 

73.  The   Man  of  Mode,   V,  ii. 

74.  The  Funeral.  I,  i. 

75.  Davies,  Dramatic  Miscellanies,   III,    412. 

76.  Ibid,,  III,  409. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  ^5 

He  hopes  you  nothing  to  his  charge  can  lay, 

There's  not  a  cuckold  made  in  all  his  play. 

Nay,  you  must  own,  if  you  believe  your  eyes, 

He  draws  his  pen  against  your  enemies: 

For  he  declares,  today,  he  merely  strives 

To  maul  the  beaux — because  they  maul  your  wives. 

Nor,  sirs,  to  you  whose  sole  religion's  drinking. 

Whoring,  roaring,  without  the  pain  ol  thinking, 

He  fears  he's  made  a  fault  you'll  ne'er  forgive, 

A  crime  beyond  the  hopes  of  a  reprieve: 

An  honest  rake  forego  the  joys  of  life. 

His  whores  and  wine,  t'  embrace  a  dull  chaste  wife! 

Such  out-of-fashion  stuff!  but  then  a(,ain, 

He's  lewd  for  above  four  acts,  gentlemen. 


Four  acts  for  your  coarse  palates  were  design'd, 
But  then  the  ladies  taste  is  more  refin'd, 
They,  for  Amanda's  sake,  will  sure  be  kind." 

The  main  action,  that  which  deals  with  the  reformation  of 
the  wandering  husband,  seems  to  be  original  with  Cibber  in  every 
respect.  It  deals  with  the  reformation  of  a  husband  who  eight 
or  ten  years  before  has  deserted  his  young  wife  for  a  dissolute 
life  on  the  continent,  and  who  returns  to  England  still  more  de- 
generate in  mind  and  morals  than  when  he  left,  and  so  entirely 
depleted  in  purse  that  he  has  not  money  enough  to  buy  a  meal 
or  pay  for  a  night's  lodging  for  himself  and  his  servant.  The 
husband  is  finally  led  to  return  to  his  wife,  whose  appearance  has 
so  changed  that  he  does  not  recognize  her,  by  her  pretense  of  being 
a  new  mistress.  This  subterfuge  is  more  or  less  remotely  suggestive 
of  Shakspere's  AlVs  Well  that  Ends  Well  and  Shirley's  Gamester, 
both  of  which  have  been  suggested  as  its  source;  but  it  owes  noth- 
ing to  them  in  the  working  out  of  the  situation. 

The  theme  is  practically  that  of  The  Careless  Husband:  the 
reformation  of  a  husband  not  entirely  spoiled  at  heart.  The 
moral  teaching  is  that  there  is  the  same  pleasure  in  legitimate 
enjoyment  as  in  the  baser  and  illicit  sort. 

The  innovation  consists  in  the  very  moral  ending  of  the  piece, 
particularly  in  the  definite  decision  of  the  hero  to  reform,  a 
determination  which  he  expresses  as  follows: 

"By  my  example  taught,  let  every  man,  whose  fate  has  bound 
him  to  a  marry 'd  life,  beware  of  letting  loose  his  wild  desires: 


46  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

for  if  experience  may  be  allow'd  to  judge,  I  must  proclaim  the 
folly  of  a  wandering  passion.  The  greatest  happiness  we  can 
hope  on  earth, 

And  sure  the  nearest  to  the  joys  above. 
Is  the  chaste  rapture  of  a  virtuous  love." 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  the  illicit  affair  of  Sir  Novelty  Fashion 
and  Mrs.  Flareit  is  made  ridiculous  and  not  happy  at  the  end, 
nor  does  Sir  Novelty  acquire  a  mistress  or  a  wife  who  has  previously 
been  chaste.  Likewise  there  is  no  husband  who  is  made  ridiculous 
by  being  cuckolded,  and  the  only  amour,  if  it  can  be  called  an 
amour,  that  which  Amanda's  maid  unwillingly  has  with  Snap, 
is  made  right  the  next  morning  by  the  marriage  of  the  two. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  play,  aside  from  these  particulars, 
exhibits  the  technique  and  the  material  of  the  typical  Restoration 
comedy.  The  chief  incident  deals  in  most  frank  style  with  the  sex 
relations  of  the  hero  and  heroine,  treated  essentially  in  the  Restora- 
tion way,  with  the  exception  that  the  audience  knows  they  are 
man  and  wife  while  the  characters  do  not.  The  cellar  incident 
is  as  frank  and  gross  as  anything  of  the  sort  in  the  earlier  drama, 
though  in  this  case  the  final  outcome  is  a  wedding.  There  is  the 
same  succession  of  lively  and  disconnected  incidents,  incidents 
which  would  go  well  on  the  stage,  and  which  make  up  five  separate 
threads  of  story.  The  substitution  of  the  name  of  one  person  for 
another  in  the  marriage  bond  is  the  same  sort  of  thing  that  occurs 
over  and  over  again  in  the  earlier  comedy. '^'^ 

The  characters  represent  the  same  more  or  less  stiff  drawing 
of  conventional  figures.  Sir  Novelty  Fashion  is  of  the  same  family 
as  Sir  Fopling  Flutter;  Lovelace  and  Young  Worthy  are  the  same 
drunken  rakes  as  those  who  make  the  principal  characters  in  the 
unreformed  drama,  with  the  exception  that  here  they  are  not 
presented  to  us  as  carrying  on  their  amours.  Snap  is  the  witty 
servingman  who  is  invariably  paired  with  the  maid  of  the  heroine 
in  Restoration  comedy.  There  is  the  same  presentation  of  local 
scenes,  particularly  that  in  the  park;  there  is  the  same  coarse 
speech;  and  there  is  the  same  interruption  of  the  story  by  raillery. 

But  the  play  as  already  suggested  is  a  very  distinct  step  in  advance 
in  its  treatment  of  fundamental  morality,  and  marks  a  conscious 


77.  The  substitution  of  one  person  for  another  In  the  marriage  ceremony,  or  a 
false  marriage,  are  favorite  devices  of  Congreve.  See,  for  instance.  The  Old 
Bachelor  and  Love  for  Love. 


Croissant:  C alley  Cihber  J^7 

beginning  of  a  new  mode;  not  an  inconsiderable  achievement  for 
the  first  play  of  an  author  twenty-four  years  old. 

The  two  plots  of  Woman's  Wit  (1697)  are  entirely  dissimilar 
in  tone  and  dramatic  handling,  and,  moreover,  have  no  essential 
connection  with  each  other.  The  main  plot,  which  gives  the  name 
to  the  piece,  is  in  the  Restoration  manner,  while  the  sub-plot, 
which  deals  with  the  Rakishes,  is  in  the  mould  of  the  minor  late 
Elizabethans.  In  its  protrayal  of  manners  it  belongs  to  the  type 
represented  by  the  plays  of  Brome,  marked  by  coarseness  rather 
than  finish,  and  implying  about  the  same  standard  of  morals. 

The  main  plot  consists  of  a  series  of  complications  caused 
by  the  efforts  of  Longeville  to  unmask  Leonora's  unfaithfulness 
to  Lovemore,  to  whom  she  is  engaged.  She  convinces  Lovemore 
that  Longeville's  efforts  are  the  result  of  a  plot,  the  purpose  of 
which  is  to  alienate  Lovemore  and  Leonora  so  that  Longeville 
may  have  her  to  himself;  and  there  then  follows  one  complication 
after  another,  until  the  characters  are  at  last  gathered  together 
and  Leonora  is  made  to  confess  her  duplicity. 

The  situation  on  which  the  main  action  is  based  is  original 
and  highly  dramatic,  but  in  order  to  maintain  the  intrigue  Gibber 
has  had  to  use  incidents  which  are  marked  by  improbability  and 
dramatic  blindness  to  such  an  extent  that  the  action  becomes 
wearisome.  Gibber  seems  to  be  groping  for  something  different 
from  the  conventional  Restoration  intrigue.  His  conception  is 
worthy  of  more  success  than  he  attained,  but  he  lacked  the  dramatic 
skill  and  experience  to  carry  it  out. 

Some  of  the  character  drawing  is  good.  Longeville  and  Love- 
more are  rather  decent  young  men,  but  are  no  doubt  too  senti- 
mental for  success  on  the  stage  at  this  time.  The  Rakishes  are 
overdrawn  and  farcical.  The  women,  with  the  exception  of 
Leonora,  are  lacking  in  the  spontaneity  and  wit  demanded  of 
seventeenth  and  early  eighteenth  century  heroines,  and  Hke  the 
men  are  possibly  too  sentimental.  Leonora  is  the  intriguer  and 
is  the  best  drawn  and  most  important  personage  in  the  play.  Her 
downfall  is  the  result  of  her  own  character  and  conduct,  and  in 
the  '.isapproval  of  her  character  and  actions  Gibber  has  repeated, 
to  some  extent,  views  he  expressed  in  his  first  play. 

The  vulgar  sub-plot  which  deals  with  Old  Rakish  and  Young 
Rakish,  when  separated  from  Woman  s  Wit  and  acted  in  1707  as 
The  School  Boy,  was  a  greater  success  than  the  original  play. 


JfS  University  of  Kansas  Huj7ianistic  Studies 

With  the  exception  of  the  change  in  the  names  of  some  of  the  per- 
sonages, minor  alterations  of  the  dialogue,  the  omission  of  parts 
of  the  incidents,  and  the  addition  of  such  incidents  as  are  necessary 
to  make  it  stand  by  itself,  the  play  is  verbatim  as  it  appeared  when 
a  part  of  Woman's  Wit. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  reformation  of  the  stage  it  must 
be  confessed  that  Woman  s  Wit  was  not  of  great  importance.  The 
moral  tone  of  the  main  action  is  high;  at  least  virtue  is  rewarded 
and  vice  disgraced,  and  there  are  no  amours  carried  on.  But  the 
sub-action,  which  was  later  transformed  into  The  School  Boy, 
is  entirely  opposed  to  both  good  taste  and  good  morals,  and  after 
a  series  of  low  comedy  scenes,  ends  with  the  promise  of  Young 
Rakish  to  Master  Johnny  that  he  will  take  Johnny  to  the  play- 
house, where  the  latter  may  satisfy  his  disappointment  in  the 
failure  to  marry  his  mother's  woman.  Although  notable  progress 
in  the  morality  of  the  drama  had  been  made,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  fact  that  this  sub-action  was  successfully  presented  by  itself 
shows  that  the  taste  of  the  theatre-going  public  was  not  yet 
entirely  regenerate. 

Love  Makes  a  Man  (1701)  is  a  rather  close  adaptation  of  two 
of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  plays, '^  in  which  Gibber  does  not  pre- 
tend to  any  serious  purpose.  "For  masks,  we've  scandal,  and  for 
beaus,  French  airs."  And  yet  his  moralizing  and  sentimental 
tendency  cannot  be  entirely  restrained,  for  when  Carlos,  the 
hero  of  the  play,  does  turn  from  his  books  to  love,  he  speaks  in  a 
most  heightened  and  sentimental  strain.  So  too  the  efforts  of 
Louisa  to  seduce  him  are  met  with  sentiments  of  lofty  morality 
which  are  actuated  by  his  sincere  love  for  Angelina.  The  Restora- 
tion lover  would  not  have  hesitated  in  the  slightest  degree  to  enjoy 
all  that  Louisa  offered  and  his  wife-to-be  would  have  taken  it 
as  a  matter  of  course,  probably  would  have  joked  with  her  con- 
fidante, if  not  with  the  hero,  on  the  subject.  But  with  Gibber 
not  only  is  the  attitude  concerning  this  sort  of  thing  changed, 
but  in  his  alteration  he  has  omitted  one  incident'^  that  would 
have  been  a  source  of  great  delight  to  a  Restoration  audience, 
and  has  softened  the  language  throughout,  so  that  the  coarseness 
which  marks  his  original  has  largely  disappeared.  No  one  under- 
goes a  moral  reformation,  for  Louisa  has  not  been  evil  in  her  life, 


78.  The  Elder  Brother  and  The  Custom  of  the  Country. 

79.  Rutilio's  sojourn  with  Sulpita.      The  Custom  of  the  Country,  III,  iii;  IV,  iv. 


Croifisant:  C alley   Cibhcr  ^9 

and  this  one  unsuccessful  effort  at  seduction  cures  her.  But  the 
play  has  two  characteristics  of  the  sentimental  type;  it  is  perfectly 
moral  in  action,  and  it  has  some  expression  of  sentimental  philosophy. 

She  Would  and  She  Would  Not  (1702)  is  probably  more  in  ac- 
cordance with  modern  taste  than  any  other  play  Gibber  wrote. 
In  this  regard  for  good  taste  as  well  as  good  morals  it  is  significant 
of  the  change  in  English  comedy,  and  though  it  is  not  sentimental, 
it  indicates  Gibber's  readiness  to  adopt  and  lead  the  new  mode. 
In  its  technique  it  reminds  us  of  the  Spanish  intrigue  plays  of 
Dryden ;  but  it  is  perfectly  moral,  and  the  two  lovers  do  not  employ 
their  time,  when  away  from  the  main  business  of  winning  their 
wives,   in   carrying  on   intrigues   with   other   women. 

The  Careless  Husband  (acted  1704)  is  Gibber's  masterpiece 
in  sentimental  comedy.  In  it  he  has  reached  greater  excellence 
than  in  his  former  plays  in  plot  and  in  character  presentation, 
and  in  the  ability  to  make  his  plot  and  moral  purpose  work  out 
consistently  and  logically.  The  reformation  of  Loveless  in  Lovers 
Last  Shift  strikes  one  as  not  in  keeping  with  his  character;  one 
feels  that  his  relapse**^  is  quite  the  natural  thing  to  happen.  In 
this  play,  however,  the  hero's  character  is  presented  from  the 
first  in  a  way  that  prepares  one  for  the  final  reformation.  In 
this  particular  Gibber  rises  above  his  contemporaries  in  comedy. 

In  The  Careless  Husband  Gibber  lays  claim  to  deliberate  and 
serious  moral  purpose  and  deals,  as  he  did  in  his  first  play,  with  the 
reclaiming  of  a  licentious  husband  by  a  virtuous  wife.  Dibdin 
extravagantly  says  of  it  that  "it  was  a  school  for  elegant  manners, 
and  an  example  for  honorable  actions."  Gibber  expresses  himself 
in  regard  to  his  purpose,  in  the  dedication,  as  follows: 

'The  best  criticks  have  long  and  justly  complain'd,  that  the 
coarseness  of  most  characters  in  our  late  Gomedies,  have  been  unfit 
entertainments  for  People  of  Quality,  especially  the  ladies :  and 
therfore  I  was  long  in  hopes  that  some  able  pen  (whose  expecta- 
tion did  not  hang  upon  the  profits  of  success)  wou'd  generously 
attempt  to  reform  the  Town  into  a  better  taste  than  the  World 
generally  allows  'em:  but  nothing  of  that  kind  having  lately  ap- 
pear'd,  that  would  give  me  the  opportunity  of  being  wise  at 
another's  expence,  I  found  it  impossible  any  longer  to  resist  the 
secret  temptation  of  my  vanity,  and  so  e'en  struck  the  first  blow 
myself:  and  the  event  has  now  convinc'd  me,  that  whoever  sticks 
closely  to  Nature,  can't  easily  write  above  the  understandings  of 


80.     Which  Vanbrugh  portrayed  in  his  play,   The  Relapse  (1697). 


50  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

the  Galleries,  tho'  at  the  same  time  he  may  possibly  deserve  ap- 
plause of  the  Boxes." 

But  in  The  Careless  Husband,  in  contrast  with  what  he  had 
previously  written  in  this  field,  the  tone  of  the  entire  play  is  moral, 
not  merely  that  of  the  fifth  act,  the  play  is  worked  out  con- 
sistently, and  the  offensive  effect  of  an  incongruous  mixture  of 
standards  is  lacking.  It  belongs  distinctly  to  the  sentimental 
type,  and  is  the  best  of  the  early  school. 

In  the  prologue  Gibber  gives  a  summary  of  the  kind  of  characters 
that  should  illustrate  the  moral  the  comedy  writer  has  as  his 
theme : 

"Of  all  the  various  Vices  of  the  Age,  y 

And  shoals  of  fools  expos'd  upon  the  ^t^e. 
How  few  are  lasht  that  call  for  Satire's  rage ! 
What  can  you  think  to  see  our  Plays  so  full 
Of  Madmen,  Coxcombs,  and  the  drivelling  Fool.'* 
Of  Cits,  of  Sharpers,  Rakes,  and  roaring  Bullies, 
Of  Cheats,  of  Cuckolds,  Aldermen  and  Cullies? 
Wou'd  not  one  swear,  'twere  taken  for  a  rule. 
That  Satire's  rod  in  the  Dramatick  School, 
Was  only  meant  for  the  incorrigible  Fool? 
As  if  too  Vice  and  Folly  were  confined 
To  the  vile  scum  alone  of  human  kind. 
Creatures  a  Muse  should  scorn ;  such  abject  trash 
Deserves  not  Satire's  but  the  Hangman's  lash. 


We  rather  think  the  persons  fit  for  Flays, 
Are  those  whose  birth  and  education  says 
They've  every  help  that  shou'd  improve  mankind, 
Yet  still  live  slaves  to  a  vile  tainted  mind." 

In  this  play  Gibber  continues  the  general  practice  of  basing 
dramatic  technique  upon  that  of  the  Restoration  drama.  We 
find  the  same  multiplicity  of  plots,  though  there  is  here  a  material 
reduction  in  their  number.  But  here  the  various  plots  are  more 
consistently  bound  together  and  more  logically  worked  out. 
The  hero  is  a  somewhat  refined  Restoration  character;  he  has  more 
gentleness  and  goodness  in  him,  but  the  course  he  pursues  is 
typical  of  the  earlier  plays  in  that  he  is  carrying  on  two  amours 
during  the  play  and  at  the  end  he  abandons  those  intrigues;  with 
this  difference,  however,  that  the  reformation  of  the  hero  of 
The  Careless  Husband  is  felt  to  be  permanent. 

The  love  story  of  Lord  Morelove  and  Lady  Betty,  which  forms 
the  sub-action,  is  in  the  best  style  of  the  comedy  of  manners. 


Croissant:  C alley  Cibber  51 

It,  as  well  as  the  main  action,  reminds  one  in  its  finished  work- 
manship of  the  best  plays  written  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
preceding  century. 

There  is  a  distinct  effort  to  teach  the  advantage  of  moral  living, 
in  the  unhappy  outcome  of  the  illicit  affairs  and  in  the  happy 
outcome  of  the  legitimate.  The  situation  in  which  Edging  and 
Sir  Charles  are  discovered  asleep,  which  proved  too  gross  for 
Gibber's  audience,  is  nevertheless  handled  in  a  manner  to  show 
disapproval;  the  Restoration  dramatist  would  have  been  salacious 
and  humorous.  Sir  Charles's  feeling  of  guilt  after  this  scene, 
however,  is  an  entirely  new  note. 

Some  of  the  characters  are  stock  figures.  Lady  Betty  is  the 
usual  coquette,  is  a  Millamant  type,  but  is  altogether  more 
human  and  modern;  Lord  Foppington  is  the  continuation  of  Sir 
Novelty  Fashion,  whom  we  recognize  as  a  type  which  appears 
in  Etherege  and  Crowne;  and  Sir  Charles,  until  his  reformation, 
is,  in  his  conduct,  the  Restoration  rake,  with,  however,  distinctly 
more  humanity.  His  whole-heartedness  and  inherent  honor 
make  one  forgive  his  lapse  in  conduct. 

Other  characters  indicate  a  new  mode.  Lady  Easy  is  a  modest, 
virtuous,  capable  wife,  full  of  moderation  and  tact,  with  the 
gentleness  of  the  modern  ideal  woman.  She  belongs  to  the  patient 
Griselda  type,  and  her  situation,  which  contains  not  a  little  pathos, 
is  handled  in  a  way  to  gain  the  sympathy  of  the  audience.  This 
is  a  new  and  noteworthy  contribution  in  the  direction  of  the  fully 
developed  type  of  sentimental  comedy.  Even  in  spite  of  Sir 
Charles's  defection  in  conduct,  we  recognize  an  inherent  goodness 
in  his  nature.  Lord  Morelove  is  the  preaching,  sentimentalizing 
type,  serious  minded  and  upright,  the  sort  of  character  that  Cibber 
has  presented  in  Lord  Lovemore  in  Woman's  Wit  and  Elder 
Worthy  in  Love's  Last  Shift ;  a  character  who  seldom  appears  in  the 
Restoration  period,  or,  if  he  does  appear,  is  ridiculed.  In  this 
presentation  of  a  successful  lover,  lacking  in  wit  and  inconstancy, 
Cibber  was  not  following  the  convention  of  the  preceding  drama, 
which  usually  made  its  heroes  witty  scamps. 

While  we  still  have  light  banter  and  raillery,  they  are  primarily 
used  to  display  character  or  further  the  plot,  functions  which 
they  disregard  in  the  Restoration  plays.  The  theme  and  its  work- 
ing out  not  only  deal  with  the  reformation  of  the  loose  character, 
but  also  endeavor  to  present  an  admirable  example  of  womanhood 


62  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

who  shows  a  proper  fideUty  to  her  husband  in  spite  of  all  his 
dehnquencies.  In  the  presentation  of  this  high  type  of  character 
Cibber  has  again  become  an  innovator  and  has  made  a  positive 
contribution  to  the  drama  of  the  period. 

In  his  adaptation  of  the  plays  by  Dryden^^  in  The  Comical 
Lovers  (1707)  Cibber  has  not  attempted  any  changes,  and  the  play 
is  of  no  importance  in  the  development  of  comedy.  It  was  re- 
garded merely  as  a  revival  of  Dryden's  work,  and  was  acted  along 
with  other  old  plays  during  the  same  season,  largely  because 
of   an   antiquarian   interest. 

The  two  plays  from  which  this  is  made  go  well  together  and 
present  something  of  the  best  that  Dryden  did  in  the  line  of  satiric 
comedy,  and  no  doubt  the  social  satire  was  almost  as  pertinent 
in  Gibber's  time  as  it  had  been  forty  or  fifty  years  earlier. 

But  the  moral  standard,  which  is  almost  always  present,  even 
if  in  the  background,  in  Gibber's  own  plays,  is  almost  entirely 
lacking  here.  Geladon  expects  to  be  cuckolded,  but  would  rather 
be  cuckolded  by  Florimel  (who  reminds  one  very  strongly  of 
Gongreve's  Millamant  even  in  the  stipulations  before  their  agree- 
ment of  marriage),  than  by  any  one  else.  So  too  in  the  com- 
plications in  the  second  story  in  the  play,  the  moral  defections 
are  humorous  merely  because  they  are  immoral,  and  there  is  no 
disapproval  expressed  or  implied.  In  Gibber's  own  work  he  may 
retain  his  disapproval  until  the  last  act,  but  the  moral  standard 
always  appears  in  some  way  or  other,  so  that  this  play  is  essentially 
uncharacteristic   of   Gibber's   work. 

The  Double  Gallant  (1707)  is  an  adaption  of  the  same  sort  as 
The  Comical  Lovers,  derived  from  Restoration  plays,^^  but  it  does 
have  more  significance.  It  is  marked  by  the  same  general  tone 
of  moral  irresponsibility  and  lightness,  but  without  the  actual 
culmination  of  delinquencies;  there  is  the  same  raillery,  somewhat 
curtailed,  and  the  hero,  as  in  those  plays,  involves  himself  in 
intrigue  with  several  women  at  once.  There  is  more  respect  for 
morals  in  the  general  conduct  of  the  piece.  The  change  is  indicated 
in  the  handling  of  the  source.  Burnaby^^  has  made  use  of  what  is 
probably  the  most  notorious  and  grossest  incident  in  Restoration 
comedy,  Horner's  subterfuge  in  The  Country  Wife,  but  has  modified 


81.  The  comic  scenes  from  Marriage  a  la  Mode  and  The  Maiden  Queen. 

82.  Centlivre,  Love  at  a  Venture;  Burnaby,   The  Ladies   Visiting  Day,  and  The 
Reformed  Wife. 

8.3.     The  Ladies   Visiting  Day. 


Croissant:  C alley  Cibber  /)3 

some  of  the  elements  of  the  intrigue.  Cibber  has  prevented  the 
successful  outcome  of  the  intrigue,  and  has  entirely  omitted  the 
unpleasant  features. 

The  Lady's  Last  Stake  (1707) ,  in  the  handling  of  a  serious  theme, 
seems  the  most  modern  of  Gibber's  comedies;  it  represents  almost 
an  approach  to  the  modern  problem  play  in  the  Lord  and  Lady 
Wronglove  story  and  in  the  theme  of  the  Lord  George  and  Lady 
Gentle  story.  It  is  a  fully  developed  comedy  of  the  sentimental 
type  of  this  period,  with  its  four  acts  of  intrigue,  its  reconciliation 
at  the  end,  and  its  extremely  moral  teaching.  Cibber  makes  two 
statements  of  his  theme,  first  in  the  dedication,  and  then  in 
the  prologue.     His  statement  in  the  dedication  is  as  follows: 

"A  Play,  without  a  just  Moral,  is  a  poor  and  trivial  Undertaking; 
and  'tis  from  the  Success  of  such  Pieces,  that  Mr.  Collier  was  fur- 
nish'd  with  an  advantageous  Pretence  of  laying  his  unmerciful 
Axe  to  the  Root  of  the  Stage.  Gaming  is  a  Vice  that  has  undone 
more  innocent  Principles  than  any  one  Folly  that's  in  Fashion; 
therefore  I  chose  to  expose  it  to  the  Fair  Sex  in  its  most  hideous  Form, 
by  reducing  a  Woman  of  honour  to  stand  the  presumptuous  Addresses 
of  a  ]\Ian,  whom  neither  her  Virtue  nor  Inclination  would  let 
her  have  the  least  Taste  to.  Now  'tis  not  impossible  but  some  Man 
of  Fortune,  who  has  a  handsome  Lady,  and  a  great  deal  of  Money 
to  throw  away,  may,  from  this  startling  hint,  think  it  worth  his 
while  to  find  his  Wife  some  less  hazardous  Diversion.  If  that  should 
ever  happen,  my  end  of  writing  this  Play  is  answer 'd." 

The  plot  centers  around  a  most  lively  intrigue,  but  shows  a 
departure  from  the  Restoration  type.  Cibber  seems  to  have 
devised  his  own  plot  from  observation  rather  than  to  have  taken 
it  from  the  work  of  some  one  else,  though  in  his  characters  he  shows 
some  imitation  of  characters  in  older  plays.  Miss  Notable  is  a 
Miss  Prue  type,  but  the  action  of  the  play  preserves  her  virtue 
and  indicates  disapproval  of  the  effort  to  seduce  her.  There  is  a 
wide  difference  between  this  and  the  course  of  Congreve's  character 
who  rushes  eagerly  to  her  bedroom  followed  by  Tattle.^'*  So  too 
in  the  relations  of  Lady  Wronglove  with  her  husband  there  enters 
a  new  note.  Not  only  does  Cibber  show  her  a  virtuous  woman, 
but  he  recognizes  the  infidelity  of  the  husband  as  grave  enough 
to  merit  not  only  condemnation  but  punishment;  and  though  he 
does  not  carry  his  story  so  far  as  to  inflict  on  him  his  just  deserts, 
he  recognizes  the  right  of  the  wife  to  resent  Lord  Wronglove's 
action,  although    he  clearly    feels    her    resentment    is    unwise. 

84.     Love  for  Love,  II,  xi. 


5-4  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

Sir  Friendly  Moral,  who  reconciles  the  various  couples,  furnishes 
the  somewhat  sentimental  moralizings,  and  seems  to  be  the  mouth- 
piece of  the   author. 

One  does  not  waste  much  sympathy  on  either  Lord  or  Lady 
Wronglove  in  their  bickerings,  and  their  reconciliation  at  the  end 
through  the  good  oflSces  of  Sir  Friendly  is  decidedly  lacking  in 
probability,  in  view  of  the  way  in  which  they  have  been  previously 
presented.  This  denouement  is  brought  about  by  a  typical 
deus  ex  machina  device,  in  which  Sir  Friendly,  by  supplying  money 
to  one  of  the  characters,  and  by  using  his  exceeding  wisdom  and 
knowledge  with  another  set  of  characters,  brings  about  the  happy 
ending.  Cibber  was  not  unlike  the  other  late  seventeenth  and 
early  eighteenth  century  writers  in  his  inability  to  bring  his  plays 
to  a  logical  and  probable  conclusion.  He  was  hampered  by  his 
theory  that  the  element  of  surprise  should  enter  into  the  happy 
ending,  and  hence  he  often  seems  to  feel  compelled  to  introduce 
a  new  force  very  late  in  the  play. 

The  characters  in  the  main  action  are  somewhat  serious  and 
lacking  in  attractiveness.  But  those  in  the  comic  action.  Lord 
George,  Mrs.  Conquest,  and  Miss  Notable,  are  much  more  lively 
sources  of  interest.  Miss  Notable,  as  already  stated,  is  a  Miss 
Prue  type,  though  she  is  probably  not  to  be  described  as  a  "silly, 
awkward  country  girl."  She  is  essentially  a  sophisticated  city 
miss,  but  her  desires  and  ambitions,  as  well  as  some  of  her  ingenuous 
characteristics,  are  similar  to  those  of  the  Miss  Prue  type.  She 
starts  a  flirtation  with  each  new  man  she  meets  in  order  to  pique 
the  last  new  man,  who  in  like  manner  had  his  turn.  The  dis- 
comfiture of  Lord  George  when  Miss  Notable  avows  her  love  for 
Mrs.  Conquest,  who  is  in  the  disguise  of  a  man,  is  very  clever. 

It  is  hard  to  believe  that  an  honorable  gentleman,  as  Sir  George 
is  described  as  being,  would  cheat  at  cards  even  for  the  purpose 
of  seducing  another  man's  wife.  It  is  in  just  such  conceptions  as 
this  that  Gibber's  superficiality  is  shown,  a  superficiality  which 
prevented  him  from  writing  great  drama  notwithstanding  his 
knowledge  of  technical  requirements. 

In  the  situations  of  Lady  Gentle  and  Mrs.  Conquest,  especial- 
ly in  that  of  the  latter,  there  is  a  distinct  element  of  pathos, 
similar  to  that  in  The  Careless  Husband.  As  in  The  Careless  Hus- 
band, this  pathos  is  due  not  merely  to  the  situation,  but  depends 
likewise  on  the  nature  of  the  persons  presented.     In  this  respect 


Croissant:  C alley  Cihher  55 

it  is  superior  to  the  later  sentimental  comedy,  in  which  the  pathos 
depends  more  largely  on  the  situation  alone. 

In  its  serious  elements  The  Lady's  Last  Stake  attacks  what  are 
without  doubt  notable  human  failings,  and  the  dialogue  at  its 
best  reminds  us  of  some  of  the  best  Congrevian  sort.  But  Gibber's 
practice  as  to  the  happy  outcome  and  his  theory  that  there  must 
be  a  surprise  at  the  end  of  a  play,  have  prevented  what  might 
have  been,  in  the  hands  of  a  more  serious  and  larger  minded  drama- 
tist, a  most  important  handling  of  a  new  theme  in  a  new  way. 

When  he  wrote  The  Rival  Fools  (1709),  Gibber  seemed,  if 
one  may  judge  from  the  prologue,  to  feel  that  his  efforts  for  reform 
were  not  meeting  with  suflScient  response  and  appreciation, 
and  therefore  tells  the  audience  that 

"All  sorts  of  Men  and  Manners  may 
From  these  last  Scenes  go  unreprov'd  away. 
From  late  Experience  taught,  we  slight  th'  old  Rule 
Of  Profit  with  Delight:     This  Play's— All  Fool." 

But  though  this  comedy  is  not  didactic  in  its  purpose,  it  is  morally 
clean  in  its  action. 

In  The  Non-Juror  (1717),  a  play  written  with  an  avoM^edly 
political  purpose,  he  cannot  avoid  moralizing  and  sentimentality, 
qualities  which  appear  slightly  in  the  story  of  Charles,  and  in 
the  relations  of  Dr.  Wolf  to  Lady  Woodvil  and  Maria.  It  cannot 
be  claimed  that  the  play  has  any  important  bearing  on  sentimental 
comedy,  however. 

The  Refusal  (1721)  might  be  called  a  purified  Restoration  comedy, 
without  any  positive  bearing  on  the  sentimentalizing  tendency 
except  that  it  shows  the  tendency  to  make  the  drama  more  moral. 

The  Provoked  Husband  (1728),  Gibber's  completion  of  Van- 
brugh's  A  Journey  to  London,  is  typically  sentimental  in  treat- 
ment, with  the  happy  ending,  the  reformation  of  the  vicious, 
and  the  true  but  dull  expression  of  moral  sentiments  by  the  serious 
characters.  In  it  Gibber  has  departed  from  Vanbrugh's  original 
intention  by  reforming  the  wife,  whom  he  has  preserved  as  perfect- 
ly true  to  her  husband,  though  unduly  given  to  gambling.  In  the 
love  affair  of  Mr.  Manly  and  Lord  Townley's  sister  we  likewise 
have  sentimental  treatment,  and  in  the  expression  of  pious  thoughts 
no  one  could  be  more  prolific  than  Mr.  Manly.  In  this  play  Gibber 
does  not  strike  any  note  he  has  not  used  before;  it  is  merely  sig- 


66  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

nificant  of  the  permanence  of  the  changed  manner  of  writing 
in  English  comedy  generally. 

In  the  first  plot  Gibber  has  somewhat  softened  the  characters 
of  Vanbrugh's  Lord  and  Lady  Loverule  in  Lord  and  Lady  Townley, 
giving  to  the  husband  a  much  less  dictatorial  and  more  sentimental 
and  uxorious  character.  Lady  Townley,  though  she  does  not  show 
any  signs  of  softer  qualities,  is  made  to  see  the  error  of  her  course 
of  late  hours  and  gambling,  and  undergoes  a  somewhat  improbable 
but  characteristic  conversion.  Gibber  tells  us^^  that  it  had  been 
Vanbrugh's  intention  to  turn  the  lady  out  of  doors,  as  would  have 
been  natural  and  logical,  giving  to  the  play  a  serious  interest 
which    it    lacks    under    Gibber's    management. 

The  characters  are  shorn  of  their  rough  virility  in  Gibber's 
version.  Squire  Richard  is  a  sort  of  rough  study  of  the  Tony 
Lumpkin  type, — without  his  wit,  however, — but  the  credit  of 
the  portrayal  is  due  to  Vanbrugh  rather  than  to  Gibber. 

While  the  play  is  far  from  lacking  in  interest  and  power  to 
amuse,  there  is  a  very  decided  inferiority  to  Vanbrugh's  play, 
even  in  its  unfinished  and  imperfect  state.  Gibber's  play  is  a 
typical  sentimental  comedy,  with  its  undeserved  happy  ending, 
reformation  of  the  vicious,  and  commonplace  expression  of  senti- 
ment and  morals  on  the  part  of  the  serious  characters. 

Although  it  does  not  exhibit  any  startling  new  qualities,  in  its 
theme  attacking  the  evils  of  gambling  which  Gibber  has  pre- 
viously attacked,  the  play  is  a  good  example  of  eighteenth  century 
comedy;  fully  as  good,  indeed,  as  the  work  of  the  other  dramatists 
of  the  time,  but  suffering  in  comparison  with  Gibber's  own  best 
work. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  note  that  Gibber  is  said  to  have  added 
the  parts  of  Tom  and  Phillis  to  Steele's  Conscious  Lovers. 
When  Steele  submitted  this  play  to  him,  Gibber  felt  that  it  would 
not  satisfy  the  desire  of  an  audience  to  laugh  at  a  comedy.  Accord- 
ing to  the  account  in  The  Lives  of  the  Poets,  Steele  gladly  accepted 
Gibber's  suggestion  that  a  comic  action  be  inserted  and  even 
proposed  that  Gibber  make  such  additions  to  the  play  as  he  saw 
fit.  The  absence  of  humor  is  a  mark  of  the  form  of  sentimental 
comedy  inaugurated  by  Steele,  while  the  form  represented  by  Gibber's 
work  is  closer  to  the  Restoration  type,  is  indeed  really  a  modifica- 


85.  To   the   Reader.    The   Provoked   Husband. 

86.  Gibber's  Lives  of  the  Poets,  IV,  120;  Wilks,  A  General  View  of  the  Stage,  p.  42. 


Croissant:  Volley  Cibber  67 

tion  of  that  type,  and  the  element  of  humor  is  consequently  found 
in  it. 

8.     Typical  Quality  of   Gibber's   Work. 

Gibber's  work  typifies  the  change  that  was  going  on  in  the 
moral  reformation  of  the  drama,  as  it  likewise  shows  the  develop- 
ment characteristic  of  the  time  in  other  elements  of  the  drama. ^'^ 
In  him,  as  in  others,  we  see  that  while  the  general  type  of  Restora- 
tion comedy  was  adopted  in  the  construction  of  the  plot,  there 
was  a  tendency  to  simplify  the  plot.  Moreover,  Gibber  further 
departed  from  the  Restoration  type  by  the  selection  of  themes  other 
than  mere  sex  relations.  Other  dramatists  were  able  to  present 
such  themes  without  reference  to  moral  degeneration,  but  Gibber, 
when  he  takes  such  a  subject  as  the  dangers  of  gambling,  for 
instance,  cannot  entirely  avoid  dealing  with  sex  immorality. 

In  the  dull,  chaste  lover,  the  sober,  moral,  worthy  gentleman 
who  is  largely  a  result  of  the  sentimental  tendency  in  the  drama, 
such  as  Lord  Morelove  in  Woman  s  Wit  and  Elder  Worthy  in 
Love's  Last  Shift,  Gibber  developed  and  made  more  important  a  type 
which  had  appeared  but  had  been  relatively  unimportant  in  earlier 
drama.  In  the  comedy  of  Steele  and  his  followers  this  character 
was  further  developed  so  that  it  became  the  central  figure. 
Gibber  and  his  predecessors  seem  to  have  been  guided  by  some 
such  formula  as  that  interesting  personality  and  morality  appear 
in   inverse   ratio   in   male   characters. 

The  precocious  Miss  Prue  type,  the  young  woman  who  is 
destined  to  have  a  lover  or  a  husband,  perhaps  both,  in  a  short 
time,  is  represented  by  Miss  Jenny  in  The  Provoked  Husband  and 
Miss  Notable  in  The  Lady's  Last  Stake.  This  type  of  character 
soon  disappeared  from  the  drama,  as  did  likewise  the  Millamant 
kind  of  coquette,  who  appears  as  Maria  in  The  Non-Juror  and  as 
Lady  Betty  in  The  Careless  Husband.  Snap  and  Trappanti  are  typ- 
ical menservants,  witty  and  graceless,  and  we  find  the  mercenary 
serving  woman  in  The  Provoked  Husband  and  She  Woidd  and  She 
Would  Not.  Gharacters  of  this  type  continue  occasionally  in  the 
succeeding  drama,  where  they  furnish  the  comic  relief. 

9.     General  Gharacteristics  of  Gibber's  Gomedies. 
Gibber's   themes    are   taken   from   contemporary   life   and   its 
more  obvious  problems.     Of  course  so  far  as  any  serious  purpose 

87.     R.  M.  Alden,  Prose  in  the  English  Drama,  Modern  Philology.  VII,  4. 


58  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

is  concerned,  a  distinction  must  be  made  between  those  plays 
designed  merely  to  afford  the  pleasure  of  an  evening's  entertain- 
ment and  those  written  with  more  serious  intent.  Cibber  often 
distinguishes  between  these  two  classes,  and  frankly  states  his 
purpose  in  the  prologue  or  dedication  to  the  separate  plays. 

His  attitude  toward  his  audience  is  somewhat  naive.  He 
frankly  states  that  his  "sole  dependence  being  the  judgment  of 
an  audience,  'twere  madness  to  provoke  them."^^  He  again 
says^*^  that  "every  guest  is  a  judge  of  his  own  palate;  and  a  poet 
ought  no  more  to  impose  good  sense  upon  the  galleries,  than  dull 
farce  upon  undisputed  judges.  I  first  considered  who  my  guests 
were,  before  I  prepared  my  entertainment."  This  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  at  times  he  had  no  high  respect  for  his  audiences; 
especially  when  he  wrote  The  School  Boy  and  Hob  in  the  Well, 
if  the  latter  is  by  him.  In  this  connection  one  may  note  that  he 
consciously  distinguished  stage  and  closet  drama,  and  made  no 
attempt  to  write  the  latter.  In  his  "Remarks  to  the  Reader"  of 
Ximena  he  says,"though  the  reader  must  be  charmed  by  the  tender- 
ness of  the  characters  in  the  original,  I  have  ventured  to  alter, 
to  make  them  more  agreeable  to  the  spectator."  These  state- 
ments would  seem  to  indicate  that  Cibber  wrote  his  sentimental 
plays  because  he  thought  the  audiences  desired  something  of  the 
sort. 

As  a  playwright  Cibber  was  a  strong  upholder  of  religion  and 
the  established  church.  He  points  out  that  the  only  religious  sect 
to  close  the  theatre  was  also  opposed  to  the  established  church. 
But  in  treating  religious  subjects  he  does  not  use  the  Puritans 
for  dramatic  material,  for  they  were  no  longer  a  political  menace, 
but  he  turns  to  the  Roman  Catholics,  whose  activities  were  not 
merely  rehgious,  but  political.  In  The  N on- Juror  we  have  a  play 
almost  entirely  built  on  anti-Catholic  feeling;  in  King  John  we 
have  another  attack  on  th6  Church  of  Rome;  and  in  the  fourth  act 
of  Woman's  Wit  we  again  have  satire,  but  in  this  case  primarily  of 
the  Catholic  clergy,  rather  than  the  church  itself.  We  do  not  have 
any  references  to  party  politics,  aside  from  this  Catholic  problem. 

His  original  plays  in  comedy,  other  than  farces  and  operas, 
deal  with   moral   problems.     In   the   case   of  Love's  Last   Shift 


88.  Preface  to  Woman's  Wit. 

89.  Dedication  of  Love's  Last  Shift. 

90.  Dedication  of  Love  Makes  a  Man. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  59 

and  The  Careless  Husband  we  have  presented  the  reformation 
of  husbands  not  yet  entirely  spoiled  at  heart;  in  The  Provoked 
Husband  the  reformation  of  a  wife  who  has  not  committed 
any  serious  breach  of  the  moral  code;  and  in  this  last,  as  well  as 
in  The  Lady's  Last  Stake,  we  have  plays  dealing  with  the  evils  re- 
sulting from  women's  gambling.  It  is  curious  to  find  one  who 
was  so  notorious  a  gambler  as  Cibber  choosing  such  a  theme. 
The  language  shows  great  change  from  that  of  the  Restoration 
in  regard  to  moral  refinement.  Gibber's  plays  become  less  and 
less  coarse  in  speech.  His  earlier  plays  have  a  grossness  almost 
equal  to  that  of  Restoration  comedy,  but  gradually  grow  purer. 
This  change  in  the  language  is  found  in  English  comedy  generally, 
and  as  it  progresses  a  new  element  enters,  the  expression  of  moral 
sentiments,  extravagantly  and  artificially  stated.  This  last 
shows  a  gradual  increase,  reaching  its  height  in  the  later  sentimental 
comedy  of  the  middle  of  the  century. 

'  Merely  as  literature,  three  of  Gibber's  plays,  at  least,  are  well 
/worth  while:  The  Careless  Husband,  She  Would  and  She  Would  Not, 
(and  The  Non-Juror.  They  lack  the  briskness  and  sureness  of 
(touch  that  characterized  Gongreve,  but  compare  most  favorably 
with  the  work  of  men  in  the  next  rank,  and  are  not  only  delightful 
and  profitable  reading,  but  are  thoroughly  representative  of  the 
period  in  which  they  appear.  Grouped  with  these  as  possessing 
permanent  literary  value  are  the  Apology  and  not  more  than  half 
a  dozen  songs.  Outside  of  these  three  plays,  one  prose  work,  and 
a  few  songs,  Gibber  produced  nothing  that  is  worth  preserving 
because  of  its  merit  as  literature.  His  greatest  importance  to  the 
student  of  literary  history  lies  in  his  contribution  to  the  develop- 
ment of  sentimental  comedy. 

10.     Place  of  Steele  in  the  Development  of  Sentimental 

GOMEDY. 

In  view  of  the  place  that  is  al^^s  given  to  Steele  as  the  originator 
of  sentimental  comedy,  a  dii^^^^n  of  any  phase  of  the  subject 
would  be  incomplete  without  "^^feast  a  reference  to  his  relation 
to  the  particular  question  under  discussion.  We  may  grant  that 
Gibber  does  not  represent  the  culmination  of  the  sentimental  type: 
that  is  to  be  found  in  Steele's  Conscious  Lovers  (172!2).  He  is, 
rather,  the  most  prominent  figure  in  the  first  stage  of  the  develop- 
ment of  sentimental  comedy,  during  which  the  Restoration  type 


60  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

was  transformed  by  the  addition  of  a  moral  purpose,  by  the  purifica- 
tion of  the  language,  and  by  the  addition  of  the  pathetic  element; 
so  that  the  new  form  in  his  hands  has  much  of  the  old  as  well  as 
the  new,  while  Steele's  Conscious  Lovers  has  almost  entirely 
broken  away  from  the  old  and  looks  forward.  But  the  movement 
in  which  Gibber  was  so  prominent  a  figure  did  make  the  way  pos- 
sible and  contributed  the  most  important  elements  which  later 
developed  in  the  hands  of  Steele  and  his  followers. 

A  commonplace  of  literary  history  is  that  it  was  Steele  who 
purged  English  comedy  of  its  vileness  and  was  the  first  to  write 
sentimental  comedy.  This,  as  we  have  seen,  is  not  true;  for 
though  The  Conscious  Lovers  is  probably  the  best  of  its  type, 
it  merely  lays  more  stress  upon  the  pathetic  element  and  carries 
forward  another  step  the  sort  of  thing  that  Gibber  had  done  in 
such  comedies  as  The  Careless  Husband  and  The  Lady's  Last 
Stake,  which  are  as  truly  sentimental  comedies  as  this,  and  which 
possess  the  pathetic  interest,  but  in  a  less  marked  degree.  In 
Steele's  other  plays,  The  Funeral  (1701),  The  Lying  Lover  (1705), 
The  Tender  Husband  (1705),  Steele,  except  in  the  matter  of  the 
purity  of  the  language,  does  not  show  as  fully  developed  examples 
of  the  type  as  does  Gibber  in  his  work  of  the  same  period  and 
earlier. 

Steele's  first  play  to  be  acted.  The  Funeral,  lacks  sentimental 
quality;  it  is  merely  a  comedy  which,  when  compared  to  the 
Restoration  type,  has  a  higher  moral  tone.  Steele  had  no  higher 
motive,  he  tells  us,  in  writing  this  play  than  the  purpose  of  re- 
instating himself  in  the  opinion  of  his  fellow  soldiers  who  had 
ostracized  him  as  a  moral  prig  after  the  appearance  of  The  Christian 
Hero  (1701).  In  his  preface  he  mentions  two  themes  as  those 
around  which  the  comedy  is  written,  namely,  the  practices  of 
undertakers  and  "legal  villanies."  Lady  Brumpton,  who  had 
bigamously  married  Lord  Brumpton,  is  discredited  by  being  ejected 
from  Lord  Brumpton's  household,  but  there  is  no  suggestion  that 
she  is  in  any  way  reformed,  and  in  the  rest  of  the  action  none  of 
the  other  elements  of  sentimental  comedy  are  prominent. 

The  Lying  Lover  goes  a  little  further  and  reforms  the  hero  at 
the  end,  as  is  done  in  the  comedies  of  Gibber.  But  even  this 
similarity  is  only  superficial,  for  the  hero  is  not  really  vicious, 
being  guilty  only  of  some  entertaining  lying,  and  the  reformation 
is  brought  about,  not  by  approved  sentimental  feminine  means. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cihher  C/ 

but  by  the  fact  that  the  hero  finds  himself  in  prison.  But  even 
though  the  hero  is  humiliated  by  temporary  imprisonment,  his 
delinquencies  are  so  diverting  that  the  reader  is  entirely  in  sympathy 
with  him.  Our  sympathy  for  him,  indeed,  is  so  great  that  it  is  a 
distinct  disappointment  that  the  lady  is  given  to  the  honest  and 
jealous  lover  instead  of  to  him.  Steele  lays  no  claim  to  origin- 
ality in  the  reform,  "compunction  and  remorse"  of  his  hero,  for 
in  his  preface  he  says  that  such  things  had  been  "frequently  ap- 
plauded on  the  stage."  Nor  is  the  versifying  of  the  elevated 
portions  of  the  play  a  new  thing;  it  is  found  both  earlier  and  later 
than  sentimental  comedy  and  is  not  a  distinctive  mark  of  that 
type. 

The  Tender  Husband  was  indebted  to  Gibber's  Careless  Hus- 
band, which  had  recently  appeared,  but  is  not  to  be  compared 
to  it  in  its  sentimental  qualities.  In  both  plays,  however,  we 
have  the  reconciliation  of  an  estranged  husband  and  wife.  In 
Gibber  it  is  the  husband  who  is  the  offender,  and  he  is  recalled 
from  his  vices  by  the  patient  fidelity  of  his  wife;  a  reformation 
based  on  sentiment.  In  The  Tender  Husband,  the  wife  is  reformed 
from  extravagance  in  her  expenditure  of  time  and  money  on 
trivialities,  and  from  failure  in  her  duty  to  her  husband,  but  the 
reformation  is  brought  about  by  a  mere  trick  that  the  husband 
plays  upon  the  wife  rather  than  by  the  interaction  of  personality 
on  personality.  Steele  shows  nothing  of  the  serious  grasp  of  the 
situation  that  Gibber  shows  in  his  play  on  the  same  theme.  The 
Provoked  Husband.  Steele's  handling  is  distinctly  less  artistic  and 
distinctly  less  sentimental  than  in  either  of  Gibber's  plays.  This 
is  seen  also  in  Steele's  light  treatment  of  the  wife's  equivocal  action 
toward  Fainlove,  whom  she  mistakenly  supposes  to  be  a  man, 
and  toward  whom  she  makes  questionable  advances.  Not  only 
in  regard  to  such  situations  as  this,  but  in  the  attitude  toward 
actual  breaches  of  morality,  Steele  shows  a  lower  standard  than 
Gibber.  In  both  The  Careless  Husband  and  The  Tender  Husband 
the  hero  keeps  a  mistress,  but  while  Gibber  brings  the  illicit 
amour  to  an  end  with  the  disgrace  of  the  mistress  and  a  distinct 
moral,  Steele  not  only  shows  none  of  this  disapproval  but  provides 
the  mistress  with  a  husband  of  means  and  gives  her  a  good  dowry.  ' 

Seventeen  years  later,  though  according  to  Genest''^  the  play 
had  been  written  some  years  before  it  was  acted,  Steele  produced 


91.      Ill,   100. 


62  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

his  fully  developed  comedy  of  the  sentimental  type,  The  Conscious 
Lovers.  It  is  entirely  different  from  the  preceding  plays,  for 
instead  of  containing  a  lively  intrigue  with  clever  satire  and  wit, 
such  as  we  have  in  The  Lying  Lover,  the  tone  throughout  is  fixed 
by  the  pathetic  and  didactic  elements.  Steele  rightly  felt  that  he 
was  doing  something  new,  and  took  credit  to  himself  in  the  prologue : 

"But  the  bold  sage — the  poet  of  tonight — 
By  new  and  desperate  rules  resolved  to  write. 

'Tis  yours  with  breeding  to  refine  the  age, 
To  chasten  wit,  and  moralise  the  stage." 

Not  only  does  this  moral  and  sentimental  note  appear  through- 
out, but  in  Mr.  Sealand,  especially  in  his  dialogue  with  Sir  John 
Bevil  in  the  fourth  act,  there  appears  the  exaltation  of  the  trades- 
man class  which  culminated  in  the  work  of  Lillo.  Bevil  Junior  is  a 
pattern  of  propriety  and  goodness,  but  his  lack  of  virility  and 
brilliance  contrasts  him  most  disadvantageously  with  the  heroes 
of  the  preceding  period.  He  is  the  dull,  chaste  lover,  the  hero 
of  the  second  intrigue  of  the  Restoration  and  Gibber  type  of  comedy, 
the  Lord  Morelove  sort,  exalted  to  the  first  place.  Indiana  is 
the  patient  Griselda  type,  the  Lady  Easy  sort  of  person,  but  in 
The  Conscious  Lovers  her  gentleness  and  goodness  are  not  used  to 
recall  the  erring,  but  are  presented  merely  as  desirable  qualities 
for  a  virtuous  young  woman  to  possess.  The  witty  rake  has 
disappeared.  The  Wildairs,  Lovelesses,  Millamants,  and  Lady 
Betties  are  no  more,  and  in  their  places  are  maudlin,  sickly 
sentimentalists,  whose  goodness  and  sufferings  are  all  that  commend 
them.  Parson  Adams  was  right,  it  does  contain  "some  things 
almost  solemn  enough  for  a  sermon." 

This  sentimental  didacticism  becomes  still  more  conspicious 
in  the  work  of  Holcroft  and  his  school,  whose  plays  are  rendered 
degenerate  and  emasculate  thereby.  If  the  historians  of  literature 
mean  that  Steele  was  the  originator  of  this  type,  whose  essential 
characteristic  is  the  centering  of  the  action  around  a  pathetic 
situation,  they  are  probably  right;  but  any  statement  that 
it  was  he  who  introduced  the  sentimental  or  pathetic  element 
into  English  comedy,  or  that  he  began  the  reformation  of  the 
drama  in  the  direction  of  morality,  is  easily  seen  to  be  false  by 
a  comparison  of  his  work  with  the  earlier  and  contemporary 
work  of  Gibber. 


Croissant:  Volley  Cihber  63 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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Prose. 

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of  the  Stage  during  his  Own  Time.  Written  by  Himself.  London, 
1740.  (I  have  used  the  fourth  edition,  London,  1756.  Best 
edition  is  that  of  Lowe,  London,  1889.) 

A  Letter  from  Mr.  Gibber,  to  Mr.  Pope,  Inquiring  into  the 
Motives  that  might  induce  him  in  his  Satyrical  Works,  to  be  so 
frequently  fond  of  Mr.  Gibber's  Name.     London,  1742. 

The  Egoist:  or,  Golley  upon  Gibber.  Being  his  own  Picture 
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more  rightful  Glaim  to  it,  is  Asserted.     With  an  Expostulatory 

Address  to  the  Reverend  Mr.  W.  W n,  Author  of  the  new 

Preface,  and  Adviser  in  the  curious  Improvements  of  that  Satire. 
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Gentleman's  Magazine.     London,  1731 — 
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64^  University  of  Kansas  Humanistic  Studies 

A  Rhapsody  on  the  Marvellous:  Arising  from  the  First  Odes 
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Fame  then  was  cheap,  and  the  first  comer  sped : 

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liberius  si 
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The   Non-Juror.     1718. 
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Caesar  in  Aegypt.     1725. 


Croissant:  Colley  Cibber  65 

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